


Under the Gun

by Cards_Slash



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-04 14:05:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 41,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10280342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: Captain's a bandit. Pup, Snake, and the Engineer are his men. The new Marshal, Spock, aims to catch them all and the simple country doctor just got dragged into the mess.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **there is a call out in this fic regarding how to spell Chekov's name which was intended for myself who, indeed, spelled it Checkov for at least 2 fics.
> 
> Repost from LJ (2009)

They called him ‘Pup’ and that was clearly indicative of his age, appearance and maturity. It was, as far as Spock was concerned, the most ridiculous name of the whole gang. The other names among the band of outlaws at least commanded the vague air of respect: The Engineer, Captain, and Snake. This one seemed content with nothing more than a ridiculous, childish name. In fact, rather than be offended, he seemed to revel in it.  
  
“I need some more salt,” Pup called from behind the bars. He was slurping his beer out of the tin mug and slamming it down on the wooden table the deputies had dragged into the cell for him. “Hey,” he whistled. “You.” Pup was moving now; Spock did not turn around. “You can hear me. I know you can hear me—” He must have been wrapping his dust-filthy hands around the bars now. He might have been tilting his head to the side just like the disobedient little creature he was named for, tongue catching the last taste of his last meal around the corner of his lips. “I’ve heard stories about you. You know that?”  
  
“Shut up and sit down,” a deputy shouted.  
  
Spock glanced at the deputy. “Perhaps you should excuse yourself,” he said calmly, “It is Mr. Chekov’s last meal. The least we can do is allow him to spend it how he chooses.”  
  
Pup giggled. “Last meal,” he repeated. “Your last meal isn’t worth a damn. Where’s the salt? A man should have salt before he dies is what I think.”   
  
When Spock did turn to look at him he found Pup with his forehead pressed against the bars. His grin pulled up high on the right side of his face and cracked toward the left, his lips were dark pink from biting them and his hair was crusty curls still full of the beer and ash from the scene he’d caused before they captured him. “If you were a _man_ I would then be obligated to provide it. You’re a child.”  
  
The deputy was leaving now, grumbling things under his breath as he pushed his way out into the bright heat of the day.  
  
“You really okay with that?” Pup asked. He loosened his hands from around the bars and let them slide down in some attempt to affect himself as a hapless victim. Perhaps a child that had not had the benefit of a good home; he only needed guidance and he could be a decent member of society. It was not this child’s fault that his first, best and most lasting influence had been that of the so called Captain. It was an excellent image and it had time and time before this allowed Pup to escape. This time, however, Spock needed him to serve a more noble purpose. “Hanging a kid? They say you’re heartless, you know. I heard you’re so inhuman you bleed green.” Pup’s innocent child’s eyes glanced over, stared at where his poncho and gun belt were hanging on the coat tree by the door. The slip of his tongue across his lips was anything but the innocence of a child. It was the hungry stare of a trapped animal that would stop at nothing to be free.  
  
Spock picked up the salt shaker off his desk and carried it over to set it on the crossbar of the cell. “Under state law, you are, technically, an adult. Also, I intend to execute you with a firing squad. Our gallows are well below standard.” Pup took the salt; he did not say that he had done nothing to deserve this punishment. They both knew that was the truth so stating it would redundant. “If you need anything further for your last meal, please feel free to say as much.”  
  
“More beer.”  
  
\--  
  
McCoy tugged at the sleeves of his coat, ran his hand down the front of his vest and tried to find a way to look casual and official and _at ease_ at a God-damn public execution. Why the hell they needed a doctor to say that a man with a hole in his head was dead he’d never damn well know. But the Marshal insisted.   
  
Nobody said no to the Marshal. That was, of course, except the outlaws. McCoy figured that they didn’t say no to him for too damn long because he’d been systematically rounding them up and shipping them off to jail one by one. Except this one—there was no reason to ship this one off when it was just easier and more efficient to kill him off right here and now. This kid, this scrawny little boy wearing a bigger man’s shirt and a pair of pants an inch and a half too short for him, was a repeat offender. There had been a trial but in Enterprise that didn’t mean much more than the Marshal had decided that this one deserved to die, had explained it to Judge Komack and had easily secured the sentence.   
  
“I hear,” one whisper said to the next in the crowd, “this is just a trap.”  
  
“Has to be.”  
  
“Captain isn’t going to let this happen.”  
  
The spectacle had drawn the whole town to the dusty lot. Everyone was standing there, milling around, there were children hanging onto their mother’s skirts, there were boys climbing fences, there were grown men hanging out of the windows of the boarding house next door.   
  
McCoy crossed his arms again. The last thing they needed now was Captain.  
  
“Doctor,” the Marshal said, “I am pleased you found time in your busy schedule to attend.”  
  
The only answer he could give to that was a scowl. “I was under the impression it was more of an order than a request.”  
  
“It was.”  
  
Then the Marshal moved on. He parted the crowd easily—nobody wanted to touch him. There was order and logic and then there was tyranny and the Marshal skirted the line between the two. Too much order and everyone got itchy, everyone got to thinking that maybe Captain crawling through the hills and ripping off stagecoaches had the right idea. Nobody liked the Marshal.  
  
“Doctor?” another voice said to his left.  
  
McCoy didn’t bother to look over. “That’s right.”  
  
It earned him a curious little hum and then the man was moving away from him. All McCoy saw was the dirty blond of the back of his head, the filth on his old cavalry coat that was stretched too tight across his shoulders as he wiggled his way up through the crowd to get a prime seat for the show. Everyone wanted to see this. Nobody really thought Captain was going to let one of his men get himself executed.  
  
The little boy outlaw they called Pup was being escorted to the post. He was laughing at the men shoving him, dancing in their grip while he called back instructions about how he wanted to be buried. “And spell my name right! That’s C-H-E-K-O-V. For God’s sake there’s no second C.”   
  
One of the men bashed Pup’s head against the post and that cut off the merry little rant in the middle, the kid pulled back with a busted nose and blood flowing over his lips. He just giggled and said something real quiet and not at all nice to the bigger men tying him to the post.   
  
The crowd shivered now. Everyone was shifting on their feet and craning their necks as the firing squad filed out. The Marshal was watching with his hands behind his back and his face perfectly pleased and placid. (Inhuman son of a bitch.)   
  
There was a man with a cigar in the front of the crowd that glanced up at the boarding house windows before he struck his match across the thigh of his pants and lifted it up to his face. “Real fine day!” he shouted to everyone that didn’t care to listen.  
  
“Not a cloud in the sky!” came a shout back.  
  
The Marshal was moving forward now. The deputies that flanked him were staring one at the other.   
  
“Bring the rain, boys!” was a yelp from somewhere in the middle of that crowd. The man with the muttonchops smirked around his cigar and saluted at nobody before he flicked his match to the ground and ducked out of view.   
  
Something sizzled, something popped, someone screamed and then everyone was running. There was fire licking its way across the ground, rising up out of the dirt like it had any right to be there. McCoy jumped back, shoved hard against the building and dragged back by the stampede of bodies moving away from the danger. He could see though, the tall man with the sword that swiped at the post they’d tied Pup too.  
  
The smirking man was pointing two guns at two deputies and grinning around his no longer lit cigar. They were saying something but McCoy couldn’t hear it—couldn’t hear a damn thing. The last thing he saw before the momentum of the crowd dragged him around the corner was a man in a dirty cavalry coat pointing a gun at the Marshal.  
  
\--  
  
Scotty liked his art. Kirk thought that maybe he indulged the man’s passion a little too much at times. Then again, you only lived once and there was no reason that Scotty couldn’t have a little fun so long as he did what he was told. Maybe he was just making up for all the years of his life he’d spent in the back of a sweaty shop beating out horseshoes for a living. Starting fires was so much more appealing, surely.   
  
Sulu had Chekov; that was all that mattered. Kirk could see them out of the corner of his eyes. How Sulu thrust the black and white poncho at Chekov and handed him his guns before he turned to pull his own gun.  
  
“Looks like we’ve got ourselves a little bit of a standoff, Captain,” Scotty announced.  
  
Standoff was one word for it. What they had here was a man that was God-damn not afraid to die. The Marshal, what’s his name—Spock stared at him without blinking. His eyes were black as the devil’s himself and his arm was straight and steady as he pointed his gun at Kirk’s head. His finger didn’t twitch and the lone bead of sweat that slid down out of his hair was just from the heat of the day.  
  
Kirk had heard the man was emotionless but he hadn’t believed it until this moment. This man could put a hole in you without blinking an eye. “Pup,” Kirk shouted and held his own gun steady.  
  
“Yes, Captain?” Pup shouted back.  
  
“Did they feed you well?” Kirk asked.  
  
Spock didn’t flinch. He didn’t _comment_. He barely moved.  
  
“Marshal?” his men were saying.  
  
“Yes, Captain.”  
  
Well, that was something. Kirk tilted his head at the man in front of him. He studied his face from one angle and then the other. “This was a pretty good trap,” Kirk said, “for a minute; I really thought you were going to execute Pup.”  
  
“It would not have been an erroneous belief.” Spock’s lips barely moved when he spoke. His pretty badge glistened in the sun from where it was pinned to his duster and they were still stuck there. Right there. Lawman and outlaw, Kirk was about tired of this story.  
  
“See,” Kirk said, “I was willing to believe you were an alright guy. Now you’ve changed my opinion of you.”  
  
“You opinion is of limited importance to me,” Spock stated. Then another minute to stare at one another before: “I would advise you to come quietly without a scene. It would allow me to offer some leniency in your sentencing.”  
  
Kirk chuckled. Scotty was laughing behind him and Chekov was giggling.  
  
“Least he’s got a sense of humor,” Scotty shouted around his cigar.  
  
“Captain,” Sulu said. Everyone was shuffling in close behind him now. If he looked over his shoulder he would have seen them pulling their bandana over their mouths. Kirk tugged his up over his nose and smirked behind it.  
  
“You’ve got to catch me first, Spock.”   
  
Sulu threw the packet into the air and Spock didn’t even glance at it. He must have known, must have heard the stories about the Snake’s magic dust that knocked a man flat on his ass for a good day afterward. He must have known all that but he still did not move.  
  
“You are making this unnecessarily difficult,” Spock said.  
  
“You’ll come to like that about me.”  
  
Then the packet hit the ground, burst open and the dust flew into the air.   
  
\--  
  
At first, McCoy had thought they were dead. There were three deputies, one poor idiot that hadn’t run and the Marshal laying on the ground in heaps over blackened scorch marks. McCoy had gone to the Marshal first, turned him over so he was face up in the sun and pushed a hand against his chest to feel his heart beating.   
  
His office only had one bed so he left the deputies in care of the widower that owned the boarding house. With the help of another man he dragged the Marshal back to his office and dropped him onto the only bed.   
  
“Thanks,” he said to the tall man that helped him carry the Marshal and he got a nod and then he was by himself. Mostly, he was there with an unconscious man that had some kind of weird dust on his clothes. McCoy stripped his long duster off and loosened his tie and tucked the pretty gold pocket watch back into his vest before he left him there.   
  
It was hours before the Marshal woke up—as sudden as a man rising from the dead, he sucked in a breath and jerked upright, hands clamping around a gun that he wasn’t holding. He jerked his head around, staring at the unfamiliar walls and blinking fast while he put the events into whatever logical order.  
  
“He escaped,” were the Marshal’s first words.  
  
McCoy shrugged, “That can’t really surprise you.”   
  
Then the Marshal was on his feet and pulling his coat off the hook. “On the contrary, the town’s continuous and disturbing lack of assistance in apprehending this criminal constantly surprises me. He has repeatedly robbed the citizens of this and several surrounding counties.”  
  
“He never robbed me,” McCoy said.  
  
“Fascinating,” the Marshal said as he straightened the collar of his shirt and smoothed his hand down his vest. “By this logic, so long as a common murderer does not, in fact, kill _you_ I should not concern myself with him?”  
  
“That’s not what I said,” McCoy said. It wasn’t even what he meant. It was only that, of all the things he’d heard Captain and his gang accused of, McCoy had yet to find any person in the town that had actually been done wrong by him.   
  
“Is it not?”  
  
“No,” McCoy said again, “It’s not.”  
  
The Marshal twitched an eyebrow at him. “Thank you for your medical attention, Doctor. You will have to excuse me.”  
  
McCoy rolled his eyes as he turned on his heels. “You’re never going to catch him.” He tugged the garter on his left arm a bit higher just so he wouldn’t have to look at the Marshal’s face. They didn’t know one another so well but everyone knew that the Marshal had no interest in legend—only in fact.  
  
The Captain had shown his face. He was a real life person to the Marshal now. He was something that could be caught, contained and prosecuted.   
  
“I assure you,” the Marshal said, “I will.”  
  
\--  
  
“Farragut, I love you!” Chekov was shouting. He was standing on the railing of the porch with one hand wrapped around the support beam and leaning out from under the eaves holding up his bottle of whiskey in salute.  
  
Scotty was slapping his knee, rocking back in his seat, kicking his knee against the old table and spilling beer all over the cards. The cigar was clamped, unlit, in the corner of his mouth while he wheezed another giggle. “You cannot hold your liquor, Pup. Not a damn drop.”  
  
Chekov was singing a lewd love song at the moon and stopped abruptly to spin on the railing. He pitched to the side and it was only Sulu walking past that saved him from landing flat on his face. “Thanks,” he shouted at Sulu and kissed him full on the neck with his tongue darting out to lap at him. Sulu shoved him away.  
  
“I’m not one of your prostitutes, Pup.”  
  
“I bet I could still get a hand up your skirt,” Chekov said but he backed off and stomped over to drop back into his chair next to Scotty. “I can hold my liquor, I’ve got right here—” He held up his empty fist. “Damn, where’d it go?”  
  
Sulu turned his chair around backward before he sat in it and shook the bottle. “This one?”  
  
Scotty pulled the cigar out of his mouth so he could laugh like a bawdy cow. Kirk just grinned and picked up his own glass to take a sip. Just a little, just enough to slide over his tongue and down the back of his throat so it burned and tingled and made everything sweet and warm. “Ante up,” Scotty said.  
  
“I don’t have no money,” Chekov said.  
  
“A cheat with no pennies,” Sulu muttered. “Who took your money this time?”  
  
“Her name was Ana Marie and she was beautiful,” Chekov said.  
  
Scotty whistled and tossed a match into the pot. Kirk bent forward far enough to throw a button and Sulu dropped a pebble. Chekov patted his pockets until he came up with some spare lint that he flicked into the pan. They played a few rounds before Chekov was distracted by a pretty girl in a pretty dress with high blonde curls. Sulu found himself someone saucy to spend a few hours with and that left just him and Scotty.  
  
That was fine, the night was dark around them, the cards were scattered and beer soggy. Scotty leaned back, put his feet up on Sulu’s empty seat and lit his cigar.  
  
“I guess she’s not working tonight,” Kirk said.  
  
Scotty puffed a breath of smoke. “Oh, she’s here. I can smell her sweet perfume from here.” He pulled a stick of dynamite out of his pocket and regarded it with the air of a lover. He stroked his fingers down the side of it. “You need to find yourself a lady.”  
  
“I’ve got a few,” Kirk said.  
  
“Not a good enough one,” Scotty said, “You’ve got to find yourself a real feisty mistress, I think. Someone to keep you from getting bored.”  
  
Kirk snorted. He didn’t even have to tell Scotty that the first thing he thought of was the man with the devil’s black eyes that wanted to see him dead. Feisty—well, that wasn’t exactly the right word for it. But Marshal Spock seemed like the sort of man that wasn’t going to stop.   
  
“I meant the sort that didn’t want you dead.” Scotty turned his face toward the doors behind Kirk and smiled into the dim candle light. “Doesn’t she smell sweet?”  
  
Kirk cocked his head back to look through the doors and squinted to see if he could find Scotty’s lady among the other bodies crowded into the loud saloon. There were plenty of pretty skirts but he couldn’t make one out from the other. “Sure,” he agreed.  
  
\--  
  
The bar mistress called herself Uhura and offered no first name to accompany it. Spock held his gun in one hand and followed her up the cramped staircase to the rooms at the back of the saloon. The hallways were dingy and foul with the smell of sweat and sex. Everything was filthy with streaks and marks leftover from dirty men.   
  
“You will not warn him,” Spock said.  
  
Uhura glanced back at him over her shoulder without a comment. The glance was as much a promise of disobedience as it was to check if he were truly serious. Farragut was an older town than Enterprise. The people here seemed to have developed some illogical loyalty to Captain and his men. They harbored and cared for him when he was finished causing chaos in the surrounding towns; Spock had only discovered Captain’s exact whereabouts by chance.  
  
“Marshal,” Uhura said as she swung the key tied to the long ribbon around her wrist, “He isn’t going to need me to warn him. He’ll hear you coming a mile away.” She stepped lightly down the hall to the last room on the left. There was a sachet tied to the door that smelled like a flower Spock could not immediately name. She touched the doorknob with the barest of touch.   
  
Glass shattered from within the room. A woman was shouting obscenities. “Move,” Spock said to Uhura and she stepped back to allow him room to force the door open with the weight of his body. Inside, the room was all pink right down to the fluttering curtains framing the now shattered window. A woman wrapped in a sheet was waving her fist out the window.  
  
“You forgot your boot!” She bent down and threw the boot at the ground.   
  
Spock moved her out of the window to see Kirk picking himself up off the ground, one hand clamped around his arm that looked as if it were bleeding while he clutched his clothes with the other and whistled shrilly.   
  
Uhura stepped up to look out the window, to watch the man they called Snake ride up, hand out and pull Kirk naked up onto the horse with him.   
  
“Get my boots!” Kirk shouted.  
  
The Engineer rode past with what must have been Kirk’s horse and the last one, Pup pulled his own horse to a stop and jumped down to grab the boots, clutched them against his chest as he pulled himself back up into the saddle and they were gone.  
  
Uhura pressed her lips together and shook her head at him. “You walk like a lawman. How the hell do you ever figure to sneak up on him?”  
  
“He forgot his Daddy’s knife,” the woman on the bed said.  
  
“Please give it to me,” Spock said. She didn’t look like she was going to until Uhura shrugged her shoulders in a manner that betrayed her doubt that he would have possession of it for any length of time. “I will be sure to return it to him should I see him again. You have my word.”  
  
“The word of a Marshal,” the woman on the bed said, “what good is that?” She held the knife out to him anyway.  
  
\--  
  
McCoy woke up alone. He did that a lot now. That was the point in coming here to the middle of nowhere surrounded by nothing. To be alone, to be far away from people that knew anything about him, so that he could just _be_ again. Just be a country doctor in a strange country. He got out of bed, stumbled through the morning, washed his face and hands and pulled his clothes on.  
  
First, he put on the white shirt that was mostly clean except a persistent stain low near his waist, then his suspenders and then his dark vest with the pinstripes to hide the stain. It made him look taller and leaner than he was and that wasn’t so bad. His tie was blue, bright where the rest was dark. He pulled his pants on, tucked his shirt in, fixed his suspenders and buttoned both sides of the vest buttons. He didn’t look half bad with his hair brushed—grabbed his frock coat and his hat on his way toward the door.  
  
There was a familiar looking oriental man standing on his doorstep with a long knife in one hand and a cheeky bastard with a cigar and a bowler hat standing next to him.   
  
“Good day to you,” the cheeky man said. “Are you Dr. McCoy?”  
  
The man with the knife grabbed him by the shoulder of his coat and yanked him forward, pressed the sharp edge of the knife to his throat so tight it almost split his skin.  
  
“Well,” McCoy said, “If you’re here to kill I’m not sure—if you’ve got someone sick that needs a doctor, I might be. You won’t know if you keep pushing that knife to my throat.”  
  
“Back in the house,” the man with the knife said. The three of them moved back inside his doorway and the cheeky one kicked the door shut. “He’s not sick. He’s injured.”  
  
“Real sorry about this, Doc,” the cheeky one said as he pulled a rope from around his waist and caught his hands to wrap it around his wrists.  
  
“What kind of injured?” McCoy asked. Since it didn’t look like he was going to get much of a choice in the matter. It’d be a real crying shame if these here boys wasted all their time and kidnapped McCoy only to find out too late that he didn’t have the supplies he needed to do any life saving. “You’re Captain’s men.”  
  
“Call me Scotty,” the cheeky one said. “That’s Sulu.”  
  
“He’s cut,” Sulu said.  
  
“With what?” McCoy asked. He hissed at the ropes burning into his wrists and up his forearms as Scotty tied them off. He wasn’t paying much attention to how Scotty pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and sniffed it, shook it.   
  
“Glass,” Sulu stated. “What are you going to need to fix him?”  
  
“A damn big bottle of whiskey and my bag,” McCoy said.  
  
“Where’s your bag?” Sulu asked as he rifled through the things on his table that were most definitely not a black medical bag. He knocked over a card and a picture and pushed a vase to the edge of the table before looking at him.  
  
“At the office,” McCoy said.  
  
“I’ll get it,” Sulu said, “You take him to Captain.”   
  
“Real sorry,” Scotty said again as he crowded up close and stuffed the handkerchief half in McCoy’s mouth before he reached behind him to tie it tight. It tasted like dirt, sweat and some combination of tears, tobacco and snot. “It’s mostly clean.”  
  
Then he was dragged out into the daylight again, off to the side and Sulu held his hands while Scotty swung up into a saddle and held his hand up. They shoved and pulled and pushed him until he was sitting behind Scotty, clutching the back of his slick vest in some vain hope of not being knocked backward off the horse.  
  
\--  
  
Damn it.  
  
“I told you,” Kirk said _again_ , “not to do that. Look at that.” He motioned a hand toward the doctor that was half covered in dirt where he must have fallen off the horse before Scotty thought far enough ahead to have the man put his arms around him. There was nothing useful at all about a doctor with a head injury. Worse than that there was Scotty’s lucky kerchief in the man’s mouth and that thing wasn’t fit to wipe your nose on.  
  
“Has he been going on about that the whole time I’ve been gone?” Scotty asked.  
  
“More or less,” Chekov said.  
  
Kirk rolled his eyes at them. The injury wasn’t that serious. It was nothing more than a fancy cut that bled longer than Sulu had been comfortable with. Jumping through a glass window naked left one with that sort of risk. He was happy enough that the worst wound had been to his arm and not to his ass.  
  
Scotty slid off his horse and dragged the doctor down with him, tugged at the ropes around his wrists so they could separate from one another. The doctor immediately clawed at the kerchief in his mouth, spitting and snarling curses as he threw it on the ground. “I said I was sorry,” Scotty said.  
  
“Sorry? What do you do with that thing, wipe your ass?”   
  
“Everything but,” Chekov said.  
  
The doctor looked far too prissy to be standing there in the space between towns under the shade of a lone tree and a lot of rocks and dirt. Prissy and spoiled and aghast. He spit and spit and spit to the side until the taste must have gotten better. Kirk pushed himself up to standing with his good arm and limped over to the man. “Look, I hate to interrupt but I’ve got this problem.”  
  
“You kidnapped me,” the doctor said.  
  
Kirk shrugged. “If I figured I could have made it into town to see you at the office and out before my new good buddy found me—all of this wouldn’t be necessary.”  
  
For a minute there was only staring. A supposedly righteous man staring hard at a common criminal with some attempt to discern if there was anything worth saving in this man’s soul. Not that the doctor had a real choice in the matter. Sure, Scotty would mostly only torment him and Chekov would mostly only annoy him but Sulu would really threaten him. Kirk shifted his weight to the stronger side, off his sore ankle and waited.  
  
“Do you have a real name?” the doctor asked.  
  
“Jim Kirk,” Kirk said, “Do you?”  
  
“Leonard McCoy.” That was a nice enough start, Kirk figured. The doctor nodded at his arm and Kirk turned to let him get a better view of it. He grit his teeth as the wound was peeled apart and then pushed closed again. A fresh line of blood oozed down his arm and dripped off his elbow. “Looks clean. What’d you cut it on?”  
  
“Glass,” Kirk said.   
  
“Your ankle?” McCoy asked.  
  
“Jumping,” Kirk said.  
  
Sulu was there then, with the big black bag and he threw it at the doctor before he was even off his horse. “Spock’s back in Enterprise already. That son of a bitch doesn’t give up—he was waiting across the street from the doctor’s office.”  
  
McCoy didn’t look surprised. “Whiskey?” he asked.  
  
“Pup,” Kirk called, “Just him?”  
  
“Just him.”  
  
“Well, then, that’s unfortunate for you,” he said to McCoy. It might not be entirely wise to threaten the man that was going to be stabbing him with those ugly needles doctors did sutures with but he was going to do it anyway. “Looks like you’re going to be our guest for a while.”  
  
“Why?” was an almost idle question as McCoy poured whiskey down his arm and that burned like fire. _Hell_ fire.  
  
“I can’t have you telling the Marshal what you know.”  
  
McCoy glared at him like he hated him and then thrust the bottle at him spat: “Drink,” and dropped to a crouch to pull open his bag.  
  
\--  
  
Despite the local legends constantly perpetuated by the townspeople, Captain had not risen from the ground as a full grown man and begun a life of crime and intrigue that filled their lonely Saturday afternoons with excitement. Captain had a name; each member of his gang had a real name. He was, in fact, a living, breathing, _bleeding_ man.  
  
It was only inevitable that he seek out the only doctor in the three closest counties to tend to his wounds. Spock doubted that the man would come himself when he was not in optimal condition but his gang would come for him. Spock waited outside of the doctor’s office until he was certain that the man was not coming before he went to McCoy’s house. It was empty as well.  
  
Spock could acknowledge skill when he saw it. This band of mismatched and otherwise unremarkable criminals was smarter than they were commonly given credit for. All he needed was some small crack in the seemingly perfect exterior.  
  
First, he needed a name and an identity to go with it. The knife was a fortunate accident in that effort. The woman had referred to it as belonging to the Captain’s father. Therefore, Spock felt correct in assuming that the name scratched into the handle of it was the family name.   
  
Kirk.  
  
The name seemed familiar to him but he could not immediately place it. Once he was sure that the doctor was already a lost cause, he returned to the Sheriff’s office and consulted with several of the deputies over their familiarity with the name.  
  
One of them remembered a story about a man named George Kirk that had met an unfortunate end. They could not recall the exact details of the case but it was said—by this deputy’s father—that the man had saved his wife and child before he died and that neither the woman nor the boy were seen again. It was not much in the way of information.  
  
It was, however, enough to exaggerate his knowledge in such a way to prompt the barmaid, Uhura, to offer more. People were always willing to expound on what you already knew. The fact that he knew nothing was hardly important.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t a pretty job, Kirk’s arm, but it was serviceable enough. McCoy sat on his ass with his legs crossed in front of him and his wrists strapped together with some kind of leather binding while Kirk got dressed. The other three were sorting out bullets, guns and exchanging ribs about the women they slept with the night before.

“What exactly are we going to do?” McCoy asked.

Kirk was shaking the sleeves of his shirt down to his wrists so he could button them in place. “We’re going to go rob a stagecoach. You’re going to be a good boy and do what we tell you.” He bent down to pick up the gold vest and shook his suspenders free from them, straightened them out and fastened them to his pants.

“You think it’s a good idea to bring him?” Pup asked. He was tucking his guns into the holsters strapped to his thighs. His poncho was slung over one shoulder while he did. The kid was too young to be a crook.

“We can’t leave him here without someone to watch him. We can’t leave anyone to watch him. So he has to go,” Kirk said. He pulled his vest on next, buttoned the middle button and then caught his boots to get them on. “Where’s my coat?”

“I didn’t see a coat,” Pup said.

“Aren’t you getting tired of being dishonorably discharged cavalry?” Sulu asked. There was the barest hint of amusement in his voice. The man just looked like he was incapable of humor, really. Maybe it was because they were about to go commit a crime and risk their lives. It just didn’t seem like the time for bawdy jokes.

“You should get you one of those fancy politician suit jackets,” Scotty said, “Then maybe they’d say you were a governor’s son.” He was patting his pockets until he found a cigar, a match and a stick of dynamite.

“Do I look like a governor’s son?” Kirk asked. He spread his arms and the three agreed that he didn’t. The trouble was that he didn’t look exactly like an outlaw either. He looked like he needed a haircut and a shave and some clean clothes. A little spit polish and he could be just about anything.

“So you weren’t in the cavalry?” McCoy asked.

Kirk just grinned at him. “Let’s move it out, boys.”

\--

The thing was that there wasn’t much of a plan. By virtue of connections, Kirk knew when the stages were coming. He knew when the trains were pulling through with something worth stealing. Whatever it was—that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it was there and he could take it. Or burn it. They’d burn a stage full of fancy clothes; Scotty had used a fine imported furniture set as demolition practice once. It didn’t matter what they did with the goods. It only mattered that they never made it to their destination.

Sooner or later someone was going to notice. Sooner or later, someone was going to do something about it. For now it was like playing. Every robbery was another game. The boys had turned it into a competition for which one could get the most points. One point for every self-proclaimed moment of victory throughout the heist and no disputing the points in the end; the goal was to announce as many victories as possible.

They rode to the sloping hill that faced down toward the path the stage was meant to follow. It was just stupid to send another this way after Kirk had robbed one here not even full three months ago. There had been two women in fancy dress clothes that twittered and clucked and shamed on them while Chekov wasted all his time sweet-talking their offended senses. Scotty had discovered a box full of cigars. Sulu had been insulted by the driver and consequently shaved the man bald.

Sulu, of course, won that contest. Even if it had been Scotty holding the protesting man down.

“What do you think is in this one?” Pup asked.

“A coat, hopefully,” Kirk mumbled and shifted on the saddle. McCoy had to shift with him and that left them very close together. “Maybe a hat. One of them ones with the strings so I won’t lose it this time?”

“You’re robbing a stagecoach for the clothes?” McCoy said. If the man wasn’t so sour and rude he might have been more likeable.

“I want a sombrero,” Pup said.

“You’re Russian,” Scotty said. He tipped his hat back to scratch his head and wiped the sweat on his pants above the knee before fixing his hat and clamped his teeth around the cigar. “It doesn’t matter how drunk you are, no Russian invented the sombrero.”

“They could have.”

It was going to dissolve into an argument and sometimes those were worthwhile, sometimes getting them riled up was better for everyone. Kirk just rolled his eyes and tipped himself to one side. There was no really elegant way to get off the horse with McCoy’s arms around his ribs like they were. They all but fell and all but landed on his asses and that was as elegant as he could make it. He ducked out of McCoy’s arms. “Sorry,” was just something his mother taught him.

“For criminals, you apologize a lot.”

“For a doctor, you bitch a lot,” Kirk said.

“You kidnapped me,” McCoy said as if the fact could have possibly escaped Kirk’s attention in the past ten minutes. He shook his bound wrists at him in case further proof was needed.

“How long are you going to be upset about that?” Kirk asked.

McCoy blinked at him. That wasn’t important really. The others were getting off their horses, pulling them to the side, finding somewhere out of the way to leave them. Sulu took his horse with him. “You kidnapped me. I think I’m expected to be upset.”

“You always do what you’re expected to?”

“I do what’s right,” McCoy said. He was a pain in the ass (Kirk wondered if that counted as feisty and spent half a second wondering what McCoy would look like dressed up in one of Gaila’s fancy dresses just so he’d fit that mistress bill).

“What happens when what’s right isn’t what’s legal?” Kirk asked. The answer didn’t matter one damn bit to him either way. The sound of the coach getting closer was roaring in his ears and the time to argue with the doctor was long since over. “Just stay close and keep your head down.”

Then it started.

Chekov stood in the middle of the path staring at the ground and waiting for the coach to get close enough to see him. There was cursing and the lurch and snap of a sudden stop when the driver pulled hard and turned the horses to the side to avoid hitting Chekov. Sometimes they didn’t bother—those robberies were the more interesting ones.

“Watch where you’re going,” Chekov shouted at them.

Sulu grabbed the back of the couch and pulled himself up over the back.

“What’s he doing?” McCoy whispered.

Scotty took care of the wheels, opened the pouch that hung from his belt, tipped it over the back wheels and there a match on it. The flash fire blew the wheel off. Chekov grinned in the front, both guns drawn before the driver and the man with the shotgun could as much as blink.

“Gentleman!” Kirk said.

Sulu grabbed the man with the gun, hauled him back far enough to get his knife against his bare throat and gave him once chance to drop his weapon. Kirk picked it up, set the butt of the handle against his hip and smiled.

“Got you a coat, Captain!” Scotty shouted. He was throwing boxes out of the burning stagecoach. “Looks like something that fancy doctor would wear!”

“Let me see,” Chekov shouted. He went to help, crawling in next to Scotty and they had the damn thing emptied long before Sulu had convinced both men to the ground and tied them back to back.

“Sulu, let me see your knife,” Kirk said.

“Where’s yours?” Sulu asked as he tossed his to Kirk. He didn’t bother to answer. Must have left it with Gaila—it’d be fine there until he could get back around to getting it. He cut through the lines holding the horses hitched to the stagecoach and smacked them to send them on their way.

“What’s in the boxes?” Kirk shouted.

“Who did this belong to?” McCoy was asking the captive men.

“We’ve got a lock box!” Chekov shouted. There was almost always cash in those. Cash or deeds or something worth selling. Kirk had a stack of them back at the ranch that he kept to start fires. “Take or burn it, Captain?”

Kirk grabbed the black frock coat off the ground, shook it out and slid his arms in it. It was almost too big for him, might have fit a man with broader shoulders or more weight a little better. He grabbed the hat and tried it on—didn’t like it so he threw it back. Chekov threw Scotty a box of cigars.

“Worthless,” Scotty declared and threw them back after he’d taken the matches.

Sulu cleared his throat. “We’ve got a problem.”

“What?” Kirk asked as he tore through the stacks of papers that were filling one of the bigger boxes. They blew away in the wind, hardly mattered, he rapped against the bottom of the box and found it hollow. “Oh boys, they’ve caught onto us. Check the box bottoms. If there’s something gold—keep it. Keep any money, whatever you want—burn the rest.”

“He’s going to kill you,” one of the men on the ground said. Nasty looking fucker, the sort that would sneak up on a man and slit his throat without warning; the kind of man Kirk thought he’d have no problem sending his reward. If only his mother hadn’t taught him better than that.

“Where’s the old sawbones?” Kirk asked when he realized what they were missing.

“He ran like hell that way,” Sulu said. “Soon as he found out who we’re robbing.”

Kirk sighed. You couldn’t fault a man for survival instinct.

\--

“I thought I said that I was through talking to you,” Uhura said as soon as she acknowledged his presence. “You’re bad for business.”

Spock glanced at the rather young-looking prostitute climbing into an older man’s lap right at the table in the middle of the afternoon on a Tuesday and then looked back at her. “I rather doubt the validity of that statement.” His presence did nothing to hinder the business of the shameless clientele. “I have come to offer you a second chance to be of some assistance in my investigation.”

“I told you everything I know.”

“You have told me nothing about Kirk,” Spock said. It was a calculated slip, of course. He knew that the man’s last name was Kirk and he believed that he was the lost son of a dead man. “I believe you know more than you are saying.”

“So?” Uhura asked as she slapped two dirty glasses on the bar and motioned toward the bartender to come clear them away. She turned back to face him fully, her hands spread across her hips. She was an unusual woman, a very unusual proprietor of such a business. It left Spock with a sense of curiosity as to how she had come into possession of it. “What’s his first name?”

“Excuse me?”

“Kirk,” she clarified for him, “That’s what it says on the knife. So you figure that you can come back here to my saloon and get me to tell you everything that you don’t know if you act like you know something you don’t. Except, I’m not stupid. So what’s his first name?”

Fascinating.

Uhura smirked and it was a disturbingly unattractive look for a woman. “You can leave now.”

Spock felt that leaving would not have been an entirely unwise idea. However, he stepped forward until he was close enough to feel the quiver of fear in her body. It never reached her face where she stared at him with such obvious disrespect. “You have one additional chance to answer my question. His name.”

“Kirk,” Uhura said.

“First name.”

“Captain.”

Spock could admire her loyalty even if were only hindering his investigation. He inclined his head in salute to her. Then he arrested her.

\--

Nero. The fucking crazy ass bastard was robbing Nero. Nero. Nero the man that once—allegedly, very important to say allegedly because reporters like lawmen and ranchers and simple country doctors were apt to find themselves dead should they forget allegedly—burned down an entire town just so his railroad could go through it. It didn’t matter that Kelvin hadn’t wanted to be burned down, it didn’t matter that the citizens probably hadn’t wanted to lose their homes and livelihood. It mattered that Nero got what Nero wanted.

It mattered that nobody that crossed Nero had ever lived to tell about it.

McCoy just couldn’t run fast enough. It was the damn ground out here. Where he was from you could run. Unless it rained. Out here the ground kept tripping a man and there was no way to run half as fast as he wanted to. For that matter, there was no way to outrun a horse. He gave it a valiant try anyway, ran faster when he heard the hooves behind him. That didn’t matter because the bastard caught up with him all the same.

“What are you doing?” Kirk demanded.

“What the hell does it look like I’m doing?” he shouted back. The horse crossed in front of him and he had to go around except Kirk had turned his horse around to get right back in his way. “Are you insane?”

Kirk kind of laughed. “That depends on who you’re talking to.” He was wearing a fine tailored frock coat. Oh hell, that was probably meant for Nero. One of those little indulgences he got himself because he had more money than the US government and more power than God. (Or so he thought.) “I’m not going to let you run away, you know.”

“Do you have any idea who Nero is?” Of course he did. Kirk was robbing him; he had to know who he was. From the look that crossed his face, he knew exactly who the man was and what he did and Kirk hated him. The dead look in his blue eyes was nothing but blind hate. “I’m not dying because of you.”

“Doc,” Kirk said, “I’ve never asked a man to fight my battles before. I’m not about to start now. But you’re not leaving so just give me your hand and get on the horse.”

“No,” McCoy said.

The others were coming now, the beat of their horses’ hooves loud as thunder. Pup was wearing a string of pearls over his poncho, Scotty’s cigar had what looked like a wedding band wrapped around it. Sulu had necklaces hanging off his elbow and there was the sound and stench of burning wood back where they’d come from. They moved without being told, made a box around him.

“You really,” Kirk said with that same dead look in his eyes as he looked anywhere but directly at him, “don’t have a choice.”

“I kept the shotgun,” Scotty announced.

Sulu was glaring at him. Pup was grinning at him as he leaned forward with a strange sort of childlike glee at this situation. A real live criminal situation was what they had here. McCoy wanted to shout at all of them for being fools, for dragging him into this, for risking their lives and his. Forget Spock the heartless, soulless, black-eyed Marshal—Nero would kill them all and slaughter their horses.

Then there was a hand dragging the back of his coat and shirt up, everything moved too fast, he was half dragged along by the horse picking up speed and it was help yank himself up or be dragged. In the end, he chose the path of least bruises. It wasn’t damn comfortable laying half across Kirk’s lap and half across the horse, relying on one arm across his back to hold him on and McCoy didn’t think too hard about how ridiculous he had to look.

“Give him here,” Scotty said.

“He’s fine,” Kirk said back without slowing.

“Captain,” was Sulu’s voice. There was some warning there that had nothing to do with McCoy’s well-being exactly. Still it was an appeal to move him to a more comfortable positioning for the remainder of the trip to wherever the fuck they were going.

Kirk didn’t say anything exactly but he pulled his horse to a stop long enough to push McCoy off so he landed on his ass in the dirt. His teeth clicked together hard and that made his ears ring. Everything went sort of black and when it came back into focus, Kirk was pulling him to his feet with a hand under his arm.

“I hate you,” McCoy said.

Pup laughed. Kirk only looked at him out of the corner of his eye and shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not too fond of you right now either.”

Sulu was there and Kirk got back up in the saddle. Something dirty and dark was wrapped around his eyes. “We can’t have you telling people where to find us.” Then Kirk pulled while Sulu pushed so that McCoy was back in his earlier, slightly more comfortable, position behind the asshole with his arms around his chest and the leather burning his wrists.

He said nothing else for a while. Nobody said anything for a while. It was just the wind and the dull pounding sound of the horses in motion. The unpleasant jostle of his body being abused by the ride and the steady, even, almost hypnotic thumb of Kirk’s heartbeat against the inside of McCoy’s arm pressed that tight to his side.

When they stopped Kirk yanked McCoy’s arms up from around him and pushed him to one side so he slid off but held him so he didn’t land on his ass.

“We’re having chicken tonight!” Pup shouted. “Wooohooo!”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Sulu countered.

McCoy could hear boots hitting the ground, the sound of a rickety fence being climbed and then the frantic cluck of chickens being disturbed. Chased if—“I’ll catch the chicken!” were any indication.

He reached up to yank the blindfold off his eyes about the same time Pup got his hands on a nice fat bird and was lifting it up with a great big smile across his face and chicken wings flapping hard and ineffectively.

“What’s all this—bless my soul! Boys, get out of my chickens.” That was a woman rushing out of long gray-stained building. It had to be a house. She was wiping her fingers on her apron as Kirk pushed open the gate open for her. She caught him by the neck and pulled him down, all quivering with joy at the sight of him.

They had the same colored hair.

“Can’t we have chicken tonight?” Kirk asked. He looked like a boy. A little boy as he ran his tongue across his dirty lips and asked for something he wasn’t going to get.

“It wouldn’t be ready before you were chewing through the clapboards crying about your belly being empty,” she said. Pup frowned as he threw the chicken back on the ground with a defeated sigh. “There’s my boy, look at you Pup.” She pulled him into a hug across the chicken fence that threatened to squeeze all the air right out of his chest and Pup squeezed her back just as hard. “Don’t give me that glare, get over here,” she demanded of Sulu who hugged her with reservation even if she squeezed him twice as hard.

“Mama Winnie!” Scotty shouted and he hauled her up in a hug while she laughed. “Can’t we have chicken tonight?”

“Are you boys going to catch it and kill it and pluck it?”

“I like feathers,” Scotty whined. It felt like they’d done it before.

The woman, Mama Winnie or whatever her real name might have been, turned toward him with a sparkle in her eye and the expectation that he must have been their new friend. She stopped short at the sight of his bound wrists.

The merriment of the moment went suddenly dead quiet. Even Pup was still.

“James.” Scotty flinched backward. “Tiberius.” Sulu tried hard to look impervious as he took a step backward. “Kirk.”

“Oh hell, Mama,” Kirk said, “I was going to put him back when I was done. He’s not hurt.”

“I can’t believe you brought him here!” she shouted. “You’re so damn lucky you’re too big to whip or I’d take you out behind that shed and tan your hide so raw you wouldn’t sit for a week.” She looked back at the others. “And you three! I know you did this too. Be ashamed of yourselves.”

“Mama,” Kirk said.

“You close your mouth right now,” she shouted back at him.

“Mama, he’s not Nero’s man. I’d never bring one of them here. He’s a doctor.” Not that it made a difference to the woman. She was looking anywhere but at him.

“Dr. McCoy,” he offered.

“Get yourselves to the barn. You can sleep there—with the horse blankets. Pup don’t you go trying to sneak in my window either, I’ll hear you. Get. Now.” When Kirk opened his mouth to speak again Mama Winnie pointed her finger at him and that was all it took for him to sigh and duck his head.

“You are entirely more trouble than you’re worth,” Kirk informed him.

“You could have let me go,” McCoy snapped back.

“Like hell.”

\--

“Captain, you want the loft?” Sulu asked.

“How the hell am I going to drag him,” Kirk jerked his thumb back at McCoy, “Up that ladder?” He kicked around the dirt on the floor of the barn and went over to find a stall that smelled decent enough to make a bed in. They didn’t keep livestock in this barn anymore but there were some smells that you couldn’t scrub out of wood with all the elbow grease in the world. Animal shit was one of those smells.

“I am actually here,” McCoy said.

“And you’re going to stay here.” Kirk stood in the stall for a minute and took in a long breath. “Alright, boys. Set us up a poker table, I’m going to beg for table scraps and see about some business.” He stepped past McCoy who just glared at him all the harder. “Be nice or Sulu has full permission to shave you bald.”

He went around to the back of the house, scraped his boots clean, fixed his hair as best he could and stepped into the house. The room was exactly how he remembered it: the straight back wooden chair sitting in the corner. The uncomfortable couch stretching across the far wall. There was a chair that his mother had sat in to tell him stories for years that was now occupied by Pike. He slouched forward with his elbows against the armrests and his eyes half closed in a perpetual snooze.

There was a rug across the floor to warm the cold nights and a fire crackling idly in the fireplace. “Jim,” Pike said.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“Who did you bring back here?” It was hard to tell if he was amused or accusing. The tone was almost flat between the two. “Your mother was very upset.”

Kirk snorted. “He’s a doctor. I needed him and some lawman without a hobby is hunting me down so I can’t let him go. He ain’t half as angry as he wants you to think—he’s just afraid of Nero.”

“Well, then he’s a smart man, isn’t he?” Pike couldn’t quite lift his head far enough to look Jim in the face anymore. It was like his shoulders weighed too much. So Kirk pulled up the short stool and sat where he could see Pike’s face. “Smarter than some of us.”

“I’m never going to be afraid of that bastard,” Kirk said.

“No,” Pike agreed and it was affectionate. His fingers uncurled, reaching out toward him and Kirk offered his hand for a squeeze before it was released. “Your Daddy never was neither. Bravest, stupidest man I ever met—until you.” Then he coughed—hard—and his whole body shook. His mother came to the doorway for a moment, knotting her apron in worry and left again. “You know,” Pike said when he was nearly exhausted by the effort of talking. It was hard to see him like this—this thing that he had been made into. A prematurely old man that was slowly suffocating inside his own body. “This really won’t change what’s happened.”

“That bastard killed my father and stole his life,” Kirk said as he rubbed his hands together, “He’ll come find me eventually.” Until then, Kirk just had to keep on pushing. “I’ll make him pay. You’ve got my word on that.”

But Pike was already half asleep again.

His mother gave him a great big pot and a stack of bowls and spoons in a sack to take out to the boys. She caught him by the shirt sleeve. All she ever asked of him, ever since this started, was that he remembered his father and the sort of man that he was. That Kirk be a good man.

“I’m so close, Mama,” Kirk said, “I can’t get caught now.” She kissed his cheek and didn’t tell him that she was proud of him.

When he made it back to the barn the boys were sitting around a dirty checkerboard spread across a bale of straw that must be serving as their poker table. Everyone had cards except McCoy who was sitting there in a slouch with one leg straight and one bent looking annoyed and put off. Hair a mess, clothes brown with dirt and he’d never looked more physically appealing. (Now if he weren’t such an ass they might get along real well.)

“Food,” Kirk said.

“Aye, Captain!”

\--

Uhura would eventually tell Spock what he wished to know. That was, if he were able to keep her in the jail cell for a considerable length of time. The deputies were looking at her with mixed feelings of revulsion, distaste and sexual hunger. While she sat primly as if she did not see their leers, Spock could see the nervous fluttering of her heartbeat in her neck.

She was not safe to remain in the cell without him there to attend her. The realization was unfortunate. He looked over a few papers while the afternoon bled into the evening. The sky turned dark outside and he considered allowing her to return to her home. The alternative was remaining here and watching over her—while he had spent nights on the hard cots before, the thought of it did not appeal to him.

“Marshal!” was a shout through the door before they were roughly shoved open and a tall, dirty, angry man stepped through. “What kind of law are you, anyway? I was just robbed blind by Captain and his men!”

Fascinating. Obviously the injury Captain sustained that morning was minor.

“I will need you to calm yourself and state your case in a concise and detailed fashion.” Emotion was the enemy of accurate reporting so far as Spock was concerned. Most men were emotionally compromised following a run-in with the supposedly angelic outlaw called Captain.

“Detailed fashion?” the man bellowed. “Some Russian kid got in the way of my horses and I didn’t kill him—next time I see the little bastard I’m going to run him down with every horse I’ve got and that’ll serve the cocky bastard right. It was Captain that done it—he had the whole crew with him too and some man looked like they took against his will.”

“Were they your goods you were transporting?” Spock asked.

“No, they was Nero’s goods and you damn well better believe that he’s had about enough of the shit law they have in this town.”

Uhura drew in a breath to the side; nothing that caught the notice of the red-faced screaming man but enough that Spock took note of it. The name, Nero, had evoked that reaction from her. Spock stared back at the man until he broke the glare he had been attempting to frighten Spock with. “Mr. Nero is more than welcome to speak to me personally if he feels I am somehow inadequately performing my duties.”

There it was again, the catch in her breath.

The man just stared. “You’re new ‘round these parts aren’t you? You haven’t learned what men you should and shouldn’t be afraid of.”

“I make a policy of being afraid of no man,” Spock stated, “My offer stands. Is there any further information you have to offer about the outlaw commonly known as Captain?”

“No. That’s all.”

Spock nodded. “Then you are excused. You may go.”

It did not surprise him when the man headed toward the door without a fight. It did not surprise him when the man stopped at the door to look back at him. “You ever hear of a man named Pike? You ever hear what they say happened to him about a year back? Maybe you’d do better to rethink what you’re afraid of, Marshal.”

“Thank you, I’ll take that advice under consideration.”

Then the man was gone. That was of little importance in contrast to how unsettled Uhura was in her seat. How she shifted side to side and wouldn’t be still. There was something she wished to tell him now, something she wished for him to question her about but he felt it would serve his purposes better if he did not.

“Deputy Olson,” Spock said, “I will be taking my supper now. Please do not leave Ms. Uhura unattended.”

She did not like that; Spock found himself pleased with this. He went to the relatively clean establishment across the street and took his usual place near the rear of the room. His dinner was brought to him without need to order and he ate it slowly and thoughtfully.

Pike. He knew this name as the predecessor he was meant to replace. There had been some attempt to warn him away from Enterprise and the surrounding counties for fear that his upbringing would have left him unfit to tame these rough towns. If a man that was born out west and raised in the territories could not handle the towns, surely the pampered son of a politician could not. Spock had not been offended by the concern but he spared a moment of regret for not looking into the matter more closely.

The serving girl came to clear away his dishes and he cleared his throat to indicate he had a question. “Are you familiar with the story of Marshal Pike?”

Her cheeks flushed and then paled and she looked around the room as if she expected to be assaulted just by the mere mention of the name. When she had calmed herself enough to speak her voice still wavered: “He was the one before you. Everyone loved him you know. They used to say that—well it doesn’t matter what they used to say. He’s gone now.”

“Should I infer that he is dead?”

“Might be,” she said, “I figure he’d be better off if he were. What happened to him—it’s not fit to happen to any man.”

“What happened?” Spock asked.

“They said it was an accident, that wasn’t no accident—it just wasn’t.” She picked up his plate and glass and left without another word.

Spock considered this incomplete information for a moment before he stood. He collected his duster from the coat tree and pulled it on, fixed the collar and the set his hat right on his head. The flighty bar waitress was coming toward him, not smiling but urgent enough. He stepped outside and she followed him around to the side, to the cramped and urine-filthy alley next to the building.

“You shouldn’t be asking questions like that,” she hissed. “I don’t know much so I can’t tell anything but what I hear and what I heard was someone found out that Pike was working with Captain and his men. That didn’t go over so well with someone. That’s all I know.” She left him without a further word and returned to work.

All this fear over one man. A man that, in the six months Spock had been here, had not been mentioned except in passing. Nero was the owner of the nearby railroad. If memory served he lived all the way up in Narada and should have no business causing trouble down here in lowly Enterprise. The thought troubled him, however.

Pike, as a lawman, assisting a criminal. Nero as an apparently upstanding citizen murdering lawmen.

Spock returned to find Uhura staring at the corner while a pair of deputies whispered catcalls and lewd things through the bars. Olson was not there—that was an unfortunate habit of the man to leave his post unattended. “Gentleman,” Spock said, “I believe your behavior would easily allow me to exchange your freedom for hers if you do not find a different location for yourselves as quickly as possible.”

They said nothing and left quickly. Spock took a seat at his desk.

Uhura did not thank him but she stared at him hard as he stepped up to the bars. “I believe,” Spock said, “you should give me Captain’s full name now.”

“Then you should change your beliefs.” Her antagonism was both her finest and least attractive quality. Her lack of fear made her beautiful and wild as she stood up and crossed the cell. Her hands were small around the bars as she gripped them just above his. “I don’t know what kind of man you are, but if you were a good man, you’d leave this alone right now and you’d let me go.”

She would find Kirk, most certainly, because she had something to tell him. Spock could use that. He pulled the knife out of his pocket and handed it to her through the bars. “Please return this to him when you urge him to surrender himself.”

“He’ll never do that,” she hissed.

Spock could not shake the feeling that he would be disappointed if Kirk did. He said nothing as he opened the cell and allowed her to go on her way. He waited only a few moments before he followed her.

\--

“Hey,” Pup said as he tipped the bottle up to take another long swallow. His bowl of stew was long since empty, his poncho was thrown over one shoulder and he was working hard to get a cigarette from Sulu who wouldn’t give them up.

“If you don’t stop drinking that you won’t be able to climb the ladder to the loft,” Sulu cut in, “and I’m not carrying you.” He took a drag off his little cigarette and blew the smoke at Chekov with a lose kind of grin. He was half drunk himself, half relaxed back into something approach ease. With his cards clamped in one hand and his shirt unbuttoned half down his chest.

“I’m fine,” Pup said back. He pointed at McCoy. “If he wins this round we should untie his hands. You’re a pretty good guy you know, doc. I mean—a good sport. We’re not really so bad ourselves, are we?” He leaned too close while he said it, all but slobbering whiskey-scented breath on the doctor before Sulu pulled him back.

“Ante up,” Scotty called.

Kirk threw his button into the pile, Sulu threw his pebble, Chekov dug up a penny, Scotty tossed a match and McCoy looked around and then bit at his thumb nail until he got enough free to spit at the pile.

“What?” he demanded when they all stared at him, “I don’t have anything else.”

“You’ve got clothes,” Pup stated. “Here.” He yanked at the tie around McCoy’s neck and almost got his hand bitten for his trouble. “Hey!” Sulu yanked him back again and scolded him like child.

“Leave my clothes on and play the game,” McCoy said. It was almost amusing (maybe Kirk was just getting drunk himself, that wasn’t so good, someone needed to be sober) how McCoy tried to kick his heels against the ground and straighten his body. It didn’t work nearly as well as he wanted it to.

“Feisty,” Scotty announced with a salute from his own bottle of scotch.

“Don’t start,” Sulu said, “I’m not nearly drunk enough to put up with this.” He handed the cigarette over to Chekov when he got tired of the longing look from the kid. “Don’t puke this time.” Chekov protested the offense to his honor.

“See now,” Kirk said because he really was more drunk than sober, or maybe because Dr. McCoy wasn’t half bad to look at so long as that was all you wanted from him. The scruffy thing worked for him, better than that uptight clean and polished look. “Scotty here believes there are two types of people in the world.”

“Men and women,” McCoy said flatly, he pushed his bangs off his forehead and looked around at the other men still working out what they wanted to do with their cards.

“No,” Kirk said. He flipped a card at the pile and got another in return. “Those that are willing to take their clothes off and those that aren’t. Now, for some of us—like me—the world is full of people willing to take their clothes off. For some people, like Scotty here, the world is filled with people not willing to take their clothes off.”

Chekov was giggling. “You should be more willing.”

“I fail to see how being willing to take my clothes off would improve this situation in any conceivable way,” McCoy said. “For that matter, what is that bullshit supposed to mean?”

Everyone laughed. “It doesn’t mean anything,” Scotty said. There was a twinkle in his eye that was almost as bright as the burn of his cigar as he took a pull off it. The bowler hat was on his knee as he reached forward to toss his cards and get another two.

McCoy frowned at them.

When they laid their cards down, McCoy had the winning hand and Kirk leaned over to tug the binding free from his wrists. He dropped it in the pot and leaned back into his seat after he tossed his cards at Sulu. “I was going to do it anyway.”

McCoy rubbed his wrists. “Right. Give me some of that whiskey.” He tugged his tie loose and let it hang around his collar. “There are three kinds of people in the world.” He lifted the bottle up to take a long drink that must have burned down his throat like fire. The man could drink and it shouldn’t have been as impressive as it was.

Chekov clapped like an idiot when McCoy slapped the bottle back against his own lap and let out a breath. His eyes were watering at the edges. “Again,” Chekov said.

McCoy gave him a sideways stare and shrugged. “It’s your whiskey.” He upended the bottle again. There were tears streaming down his cheeks when he set it again and his voice croaked a little as he gasped an ‘ah’. “Now,” was hoarse sounding, “three kinds of people. Those that take their clothes off and I believe you know that kind,” he said to Kirk, “those that won’t take their clothes off, you might know something about that sort,” to Scotty, “and those that have the good sense to only take their clothes off for a good reason.”

“And which are you?” Scotty asked.

“Don’t start,” Sulu said again as he dealt the cards.

McCoy snorted. “Depends on how drunk I am,” he said.

Scotty winked at him and Kirk rolled his eyes and leaned forward to grab the bottle from the good doctor. He grinned because his belly was warm and the old sawbones wasn’t climbing over hay bales to run the other fucking way. That right there—that was potential. “Well now,” Kirk said, “That doesn’t give me much incentive to be a gentleman, does it?”

McCoy laughed as he rubbed his chafed wrists. “What the hell do you know about being a gentleman?”

Pup coughed and Sulu glared and Scotty chortled.

“What does it take to be a gentleman? Do I got to live in town where everyone knows my name and I can wear—frock coats and prissy vests and tie my tie just perfect and like so? That isn’t a gentleman, that’s a pretentious jackass—or a prissy bastard.”

“I am not prissy,” McCoy hissed. “Being clean does not make you prissy.”

“You’re practically a woman,” Kirk mumbled.

“If only you were so lucky,” Sulu stated and he grabbed the whiskey bottle again. “Ante up.”

McCoy was staring at him and Kirk stared back. It was almost like fucking, staring the man down, trying to figure out which one of them was going to end up on top—both of them not quite sober and neither of them much liked the other but dicks didn’t care about personalities. Kirk tipped his head, smiled and ran his tongue over his lips nice and slow.

“I’m going to puke,” Pup announced and lurched up and ran for it.

“Happens every time,” Sulu remarked.

\--

Oh, it was stupid. Getting drunk was almost stupid—he seemed to remember something about stupid things he’d done while he was drunk and they were stupid—but this was stupider. Stupid, stupid, bad. Here he was, kidnapped. Here he was at the hands of a heartless criminal that couldn’t play poker worth a damn.

Pup could though. McCoy was going to have to remember that for later. Remember how the little bastard acted like a fool and then turned around and robbed him blind. He won McCoy’s tie right off his neck and wore it tied around his elbow like some ridiculous adornment to match the pearls around his neck.

Drunk though. Most of them were drunk, except Scotty. He looked more sober than the rest of them, puffing his cigar as he collected the cards and sent everyone to bed. Sulu had even stumbled before he righted himself and pulled Pup toward the ladder. Sleep-well-good-night-don’t-fall-out of the loft.

Kirk yanked him by the sleeve of his coat and they stumbled out into the chilled night air to relieve themselves before McCoy was shoved into the horse stall of Kirk’s choosing. He complained and it didn’t matter, there was a bed there waiting for them. Mostly a bed. One blanket over some straw but that was better than the hard ground—maybe. Chilly though.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” was nothing McCoy should have to say to another man.

“No promises,” was nothing Kirk should have said back with that smug twinkle in his eye. Then he shoved at McCoy until he was facing the other way and slid up close against his back and put an arm around him. “Can’t have you running off,” was hot breath against the back of McCoy’s ear. Drunk, hot breath that moved down his spine like every filty-dirty-wrong thing he’d ever been taught not to want. Disgusting desires in breath, perverted promises in the brazen press of the body to his back. Hips fitted against his ass and he just closed his eyes and ducked his head down.

This was such a stupid idea.

He might have snoozed or he might have laid there, hyper aware of the stink of unwashed clothes but the strength of the muscles of Kirk’s arm across his side, the feel of his every breath as his chest pressed to McCoy’s back. The shift of his hips, the phantom feel of his half-hard dick (could have been in his head). The pant of breath on the back of his neck. McCoy hated him.

Stupid criminal that should have had the sense to turn himself in; a man that robbed someone bigger and stronger and crueler than him. One that whispered yes ma’am and no sir and really couldn’t play cards for shit. Did that matter so much when the body against his was hot and the hand going down his vest was toying with his buttons like an idle distraction but they both knew exactly where this was going. Drunk was blood rushing in his ears and between his legs, he was holding his breath as he caught Kirk’s hand—broad palm, long fingers, work-rough and dirt-crusted—down. Shifted his leg to get more room and Kirk’s breath was a gasp against his ear, not even surprised.

“That how it is?” he said.

McCoy made a point of not discussing the matter. Kirk understood, rubbed his hand oh-so-perfect it wasn’t hardly his first time doing it just like that and wiggled his other arm under McCoy’s head and turned his face to press their mouths together. Whiskey and stew and tobacco. Kirk tasted like fresh coppery blood and day old sweat—drunk. It wasn’t much of a kiss, just enough to steal his breath, just long enough for Kirk to grind against his ass until he was all hard and all ready and impatient as all fuck too. Then McCoy was on his knees, grunting into the straw, pulling at his own pants, plucking the suspenders free as his shirt and vest were hiked up his back and then his ass was bare.

Spit. Might have been better if they had some grease or fat or oil nearby they could get their hands on. He was halfway to making a helpful suggestion and then it wasn’t much use in it.

“Oh fuck,” he shouted into his hand.

Kirk was twisting a fist into the back of his vest, popping a button off as he kept pushing forward, burn and stretch and entirely too big and too damn slow, barely slicked and McCoy was still panting hard and spreading his legs.

Drunk was just no good at all, dulled everything around the edges after a minute. Except that tongue at the nape of his neck lapping up sweat and the breathless, almost hurt sound of the pant against his hair. Bad, bad, idea. Gave the criminal all the wrong impressions about him and his fine upstanding honor.

“Quiet, doc,” Kirk said into the back of his shirt. Then he moved and quiet wasn’t really an option the burn sparked again, dulled by the whiskey and alive again when Kirk pushed forward, shifting on his knees. “We ain’t alone.”

Right. He bit his shirt sleeve and his arm inside of it and tried hard to shout and scream and carry on but sooner or later that pain gave way to something better and Kirk was thrusting deep and even and everything was a little off-kilter, the world spun and his body was up and down and sideways before his own fist was wrapped around his own dick and it was in-out-in again, right there, don’t stop, faster, more, stop—keep going and oh-fuck, that’s it.

McCoy couldn’t be held accountable for what he might have said or shouted. He was drunk.

\--

Uhura returned to her saloon and bordello. She did not take questions from curious whores or the men they serviced but rather immediately went up to her rooms and changed. When she returned to the main floor she was as she had been earlier in the day—as if nothing had happened.

Spock watched her move for a long time, how she evaded the groping hands of men, how she directed and supervised and soothed. In a way, aside from his obvious distaste of her profession, he admired her. The redhead in the green dress that sidled over to him to smile at him was quickly repelled. He had no interest in them. Still, he stayed until the early hours in the morning before the doors were closed and everyone not already occupied with their chosen woman was sent on their way. Uhura sagged against the bar in a momentary show of weakness and the blond woman behind the bar smiled and squeezed her hand.

It was another ten minutes before his presence was acknowledged. Uhura glared at him before she went up the stairs to her private rooms. The blonde woman he believed had been referred to as Gaila came out from behind the bar to wipe his table and lean her hip against it.

“You want him dead?” she asked.

“No,” Spock answered. As far as he knew, Captain himself had committed no crime that would warrant the death penalty. While he stole and destroyed property, there had never been a charge of physical harm leveled against him. (Except, perhaps, Dr. McCoy’s sudden disappearance but while Spock assumed that it had been a kidnapping he could say with certainty and therefore did not count it among the Captain’s crimes.)

“You think he’s a bad man?” she asked.

“I believe he is a criminal. I am unaware of the circumstances beyond that.” There were circumstances. The longer he searched for this man the more he came to respect him and the loyalty he commanded from the common people that defied logic and the law to protect him. Such loyalty was bought through integrity or fear.

“If you were aware,” she started.

“As I am unaware at this time I cannot offer any idea of my theoretical behavior should I know. If you wish to tell me something I will gladly listen and consider it confidential.” At least so far as the source of the information.

“I’m Gaila,” she said and slid into the seat across from him. The damp towel she’d used to wipe the table lay between them like a dividing line and she picked at her fingernails. “I’ve known him for half my life, you know. The better half of it, anyway.” Whatever she wished to say made her nervous, she looked at the stairs and then over her shoulder toward the door. “Nero killed his father—do you know that story?”

“I am unaware of it as there are limited people willing to speak on the matter.”

“Up in Kelvin—well, where Kelvin used to be, George Kirk was a rancher, he had himself a real good living. Everyone liked him—Captain’s just like his daddy in that way, they say. Everyone that’s ever met him likes him. So Nero comes through the town and says he’s going to buy them all out, he says that there’s nothing there worth keeping, he says that the railroad is coming through. He starts bribing and cheating and outright stealing. So Sheriff Robau—you know him?—he tells Nero to get. Well, they say he went to meet Nero one day—face to face, you know—and he never came back.” She grabbed the towel and rubbed a scorch mark that wouldn’t come off. “Someone told me once that they found parts of Robau. So Nero’s men take over the town and everyone sells out except Kirk. George stood his ground.”

Then was consequently killed.

“Something like that happen to you,” Gaila said, “wouldn’t it stick? Wouldn’t it burn? Wouldn’t you think about it every day of your life how this man stole your Daddy’s land and his livestock and murdered him right in front of you when you were too little to do anything about it?”

Spock had no answer to that question.

She didn’t appear to expect him to answer it, but she stared at him anyway. “His name is James,” she said at last, “there’s no harm in telling you because it won’t help you find him. James Tiberius Kirk."


	3. Chapter 3

First there was sleep.

Then there was the splash of cold water that hit his face and his side and he was awake in an instant. Just like that—jerking and spitting with his head spinning and aching as he choked on his own breath and stared back at the smugly amused face of that Scottish bastard. He was holding a dripping bucket in one hand and his cigar in the other.

“Good morning, doc,” Scotty said. “Captain said to make sure you we gave you a chance to clean up this morning.” Then he dropped the bucket down on the ground and winked at him in an indecent way that would have been more offensive if McCoy hadn’t earned it.

He rubbed his dripping wet face and looked down at his lap. His pants were still down around his thighs; he got up to his feet and pulled them up. Sore ass aside, his wrists hurt like hell and his clothes were soaked and smelly as horse sweat. His stomach rolled over on itself and the light was far too bright. All he wanted was more whiskey and stumbling out of the stall was just the blind search for where they’d left the bottle.

“Good morning, ma’am,” Pup said with a disgusting display of humor for a man that should have had a hangover.

“What?” he demanded and bent down to grab the whiskey. It’d dull more than just the ache of his head. Might just dull the encompassing sense of stupidity for letting some common thief fuck him in a horse stall. It might not; he drank as much as he could manage before Pup yanked the bottle free, spilled it down McCoy’s chin and soaked his shirt front even more.

“Now, now, that’s not fitting for a lady,” Pup said and he tipped it up to finish off the last swallow in the bottle.

“Pup,” Sulu said. “Stop.”

“Aye,” Scotty added from where he was feeding the horses, “The way I figure if he can take the Captain and live to tell the story we should have more respect for him.” He grinned and Pup rolled his eyes at that.

“He’s not really got that big of a dick,” Pup said.

“You ever seen it?” Scotty shouted back from beyond the stall.

“Of course I’ve seen it. I just haven’t seen it—like—it didn’t look that big to me is all.” Pup said. “Besides, I don’t respect the other whores he does, why would I respect this on—”

McCoy hit him. Somewhere between scratching the stubble on his face, smelling the filth of his body, the ache in his back from being manhandled, the shooting pain in wrists from having the skin rubbed off, the absurdity of the situation and the kid’s _smug_ grin and overblown self-assurance that he was _right_ , Mccoy couldn’t take it. He hit Pup as hard as he could and it knocked them both down. His knuckles hurt like hell but the kid was coughing blood into the dirt of the barn floor and that was enough. McCoy caught him by the dirty gold shirt and shoved him flat on the ground. “Shut your mouth, you little bastard. I’m a doctor; I know ways to kill you that you couldn’t even imagine.”

He knew it was coming when Sulu yanked him up and off Pup and slammed him face first against the wooden wall. That was expected, he put his arms up in surrender and that was enough to keep from getting hit himself—at least for now. Sulu shoved his elbow hard into the center of his back but he let him go.

“It’s your own fault,” Sulu said. “If you don’t want us talking about you, don’t make so much God-damn noise.”

“Captain wouldn’t like him then,” Scotty offered as he dusted his hands off and came around to where they were. “You know he likes his nice and…vocal.”

There was nothing quite like being the laughingstock of a band of criminals. McCoy yanked on his vest and shirt and made some attempt to straight his clothes but they were wet and sticking to him in all the wrong ways.

“Really? I never noticed,” Kirk said. He was there with a heaping platter of griddlecakes and a jar of hot syrup. There was a sack hanging off his arm that clinked like it was full of plates and cups. “There’s hot coffee for any man that thinks they can mind their manners around my Mama long enough to get it.” He looked at each of them in turn. “Pup, you look good with a fat lip.” Chekov had the grace to look almost ashamed of himself. “Scotty, that’s not what I meant when I said get him a bucket of water.” There was something different about Kirk. “Sulu, coffee?”

“Aye, Captain.”

He’d shaved, that was what was different. Kirk’s face was smooth now, his hair looked like he’d dunked his head in the trough—all the appearances of being clean. It was the same filthy shirt with the blood stain on his sleeve. They’d probably pulled the stitches last night.

“The hospitality of criminals leaves something to be desired,” McCoy said.

“You did it to yourself, doc,” Kirk said as he sat on his bale of hay. “You yowl like a cat and scream like a prostitute—now sit down and get something to eat.” When McCoy kept his place by the wall Kirk just shrugged at him. “Which one of you brought up the size of my dick first?” he asked as he forked two pancakes on his plate and passed Pup the syrup for his.

“Scotty,” Pup said.

“I’m going to tell your girl,” Kirk said.

Scotty laughed. “There’s nothing wrong with a healthy appreciation for a natural wonder, Captain.” He tucked his cigar in his pocket and piled his plate as high as he could manage. None of them seemed to care that McCoy was staring at them.

They had the manners of a pack of wild hogs.

“He hits pretty hard,” Pup commented.

“Good of you to find that out for me,” Kirk said, “I figured it’d be me.” He glanced over just once to be sure that McCoy was still there. “You’re going to be damn hungry if you keep standing there like an overly proud idiot. Come, sit, and eat.”

Sulu was back with a big pot of coffee that smelled like heaven itself. Everyone raised their tin cup to get some and McCoy thought about inching closer and kept his place regardless. Sulu took his share of the food without a comment about him.

“You must be a bad fuck,” Sulu said when the last of the food was gone and McCoy hadn’t moved.

Kirk just laughed. “I just might be.” When he looked over at McCoy then he almost looked sorry for what he’d done. When he stood up he looked like he wasn’t sure what he was doing and then he came over and held out his cup of coffee and half a lukewarm griddlecake. “Take it.” Kirk smiled at him like an insecure boy.

McCoy took the coffee and the food and Kirk smiled reassuringly.

“Come on,” he said, “I’ll show you around.”

\--

There was a polished mirror in the closet of a wash room. There wasn’t much left from that time before but this mirror with the cracked edge was something that his mother had carried with her from the east when his father had brought them out here. To the land of chance and possibility, where any man could be a great man. His mother had picked it from the wreckage of their house and carried it all the miles to the south of Kelvin, past the budding town of Farragut and the almost planned town of Enterprise to this house. She put it up on the wall and dusted her hands of the past.

Some days, Kirk couldn’t wrap his mind around what kind of woman his mother was. Some days, he thought she had raised him to be what he was and he couldn’t figure if that was for the best or worst. She touched his fresh shaved face and frowned at his still filthy clothes. “I don’t know about you, son.”

“I’m just fine.” He was. “Listen, Mama, there’s this—”

She put her hand up to stall him. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what he was doing because she did. It was just that she didn’t want to know more than she had to. The less she had to keep a secret, the less he had to worry about her. Now and again though, he wanted to tell her. “Just tell me you’re going to be safe.”

As safe as he could be while robbing a train. “Of course, Mama.” Then he helped her make the griddle cakes and brew the coffee and took everything out to the boys. It wasn’t exactly a surprise to find them all locked in a pissing contest about the night before.

It might have surprised him that the old sawbones seemed to be holding his own with the fierce tenacity of a caged animal. The stubborn pride aside, the man didn’t seem half bad. So Kirk showed him around. There was the barn, there was the fence, and there was the chickens, a garden in the back and the house.

“It’s not much,” Kirk said.

“Why don’t you use the money you steal?” McCoy asked. He shifted on his feet and Kirk thought he could have been a little more considerate about fucking him the night before—should never have gotten that drunk. “Why steal it?”

“Scotty tells the stories,” Kirk said.

McCoy rolled his eyes. “Do you got any idea how to answer a direct question?” Then he pointed at Kirk’s arm. “Let me see that.” Kirk let him get his look if that was what he needed and didn’t need to be told that he popped a few of the stitches loose the day before. “What are you going to do with me now?” McCoy asked as he squinted into the sun.

The boys were hollering at one another while they chased the chickens around the yard. Sulu caught one first and Mama praised him. McCoy watched them cut its head off, watched the blood spill and didn’t so much as blink.

There was something else to the sawbones besides the fancy frock coat and his meticulously combed hair.

“I can’t let you go,” Kirk said, “I can’t leave you here.”

McCoy nodded.

Kirk wondered if he was supposed to say something about last night and couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound worse than nothing. “We’re not so bad—I’d give you your own horse if I thought you’d stay with us.”

There was a snort. “Not so bad,” he repeated.

Hours later, long after Kirk had sat on the stump out in the corner of the lot with a map of the territory and a pencil and worked out how they were going to take out a train without anyone getting hurt—tricky, tricky business. The sky was dark and the chicken made everything smell like slow roasted paradise. There were hot potatoes and fresh bread and his Mother wearing her hair back as she yelled at Pup about her plates and how to treat the silverware properly. McCoy was in the corner with a cigarette burning down between his fingers a flask of whiskey in the other and Scotty telling a long, tall story right in front of him.

“How long have they been at it?” Kirk asked Sulu.

“Most of the afternoon,” Sulu said.

“Scotty telling him anything that’s the truth?” Kirk asked.

Sulu shrugged. “As far as I can tell, everything he said is the truth.”

Kirk tucked the map into his shirt and waited for the story to come to a close before he went over. The uptight doctor looked different with two days worth of scruff on his face, dirt pasted in his hair and a speculative stare on his face. His vest was undone, his shirt was unbuttoned down his chest and he leaned back to stare up at Kirk with narrow dark eyes.

“Tomorrow,” Kirk said to Scotty. What he didn’t say was that he had no use for any God-damn pity and if he stood there long enough that was all that McCoy was going to give him. That was what they gave him: their pity and their sympathy and their apologies.

“Tomorrow isn’t enough time,” Scotty said.

“Tomorrow,” Kirk said again.

He didn’t need apologies or sympathy or pity.

\--

Olson did not wake him when he came pounding at the door. Spock had not yet removed his pocket watch or his blue vest. His parents—at his mother’s insistence—were to arrive in Enterprise within a matter of days. His father had, at the last moment, decided that he would prefer an alternative method of transportation to the train that would drop them within an easy riding distance. Rather, he chose the more expensive and slower route of stagecoach. Spock could not settle in his own mind that they would be entirely safe.

When Olson came with news of disaster, it was only a matter of pulling his duster back on and picking up his hat. His horse was ready for him when he got outside. It was a fast, hard ride to Farragut.

He could see the smoke and flames from the very edge of town; he slid off his horse at the end of the street, threw the reins around a post and pushed his way through the startled, soot-dirty faces that stared at the building collapsing. The heat buckled and warped as it ate its way through the wood. Sparks flew through the air even as the outmatched and overwhelmed few attempted to put the fire out.

Spock found Uhura in the middle of circle of women in singed dresses with burnt hair. It was hard to tell by the light of the fire but her face looked bruised and she held her arm close against her ribs as if protecting it.

“She’s dead,” Uhura said to him—spat at him. “Gaila’s dead. That’s what you’re worth.” Then she moved forward, she tore at his clothes as she beat her fists against his chest. Spock should have arrested her then; it would have been in his right to do so. Instead he put his arms around her, felt her fury against his chest the same as the fire against his back and was left breathless between the two. “You did this,” she sobbed.

“I did not.” He tucked her against his chest, his coat around her and pulled her back through the crowd. There were men watching him: One tall man with a black cap and a strange mark across his face that followed Spock with his eyes even if he did not move physically to follow. “You will tell me _quickly_ what happened.” He did not lead her to his horse but rather took her to a porch of a general store and pushed her against the wood.

She was a prostitute and he was a man; there was no reason to look at them twice. “There were five men, they came into the saloon and they started hitting the girls. When I told them to stop they hit me. I fought off two of them and I heard Gaila screaming they—” Uhura stopped. “They cut her. I’ve never seen so much blood.”

Spock shrugged his coat back off his shoulders. “Did you recognize the men?”

“They were Nero’s men—they found me because of you. Nobody knew before you. Nobody knew.”

Surely someone must have known that this woman harbored Captain and his men. It could not have been a shock when you took anything at all into consideration. “You believe they are Nero’s men.”

“They were.” There was no doubt in her eyes or her voice. She balked when he wrapped his coat around her shoulders but she shivered all the same and he insisted without words until she put her arms through it. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Should you be able to identify the men that killed Gaila, I will arrest them and charge them accordingly.”

Spock did not understand why she laughed but he did not like it. The crowd moved behind them and he pushed her away from the porch. There was someone watching him—no evidence to support the feeling of eyes at his back but he’d found, over time, that some manner of instinct was necessary to survival in this brutal place.

“Charge them?” Uhura hissed as they walked fast in the dirt to where he’d left his horse. “Is that all you have? Is that all you’ve got? I’ll take my chances with a better man than you.”

“I am the only law in three cities,” Spock said, “as for better men—you would do him a great disservice for advising him to continue in this matter.”

It wasn’t that he was taken by surprise when she elbowed him hard in the gut. He had assumed she would make some attempt toward escape as soon as she saw his horse. It was only that he was unprepared for the sharpness of the pain or the crippling loss of breath. She was gone before he had finished coughing. When he straightened he thought he could see her riding hard out of town with the long tails of his coat flapping behind her.

There was a man at his back; that strange man with the marks on his face. “That woman that escaped just now, she assaulted my men.”

“Who,” Spock coughed as he tried to straighten to his full height, “do I have the pleasure of speaking to? And in what manner did that woman assault your men?”

The man’s grin was as heartless as a demon’s. His eyes caught the firelight as if he were a ghoul from a child’s book. He wore a long coat, leaned forward on a black, polished cane with a bright, gleaming silver knob—he wore black gloves, and shining shoes. “I believe you invited me to your town, Marshal. I have several things I wish to speak to you about—starting with the poor, poor presence of law in these counties. My men were assaulted, my stagecoaches have been robbed and as I understand it you have failed twice now to apprehend the suspects.”

“Your name, sir,” Spock said.

“I can only assume that, should I intend to protect my investments, I will need to take matters into my own hands. Bandits and outlaws cannot be allowed to run freely—what will the people think? Soon no man’s horse will be safe.” He looked to the left as another man with a strange marking stepped up to stand at his side.

“I will ask you only one more time before I consider this conversation finished,” Spock said, “your name, sir.”

“You may,” the second man said, “call him Mr. Nero with gratitude and respect.”

“Ah,” Spock said. He had never held such distaste for a man at the first meeting as he held for this man now. “Then I believe we should find somewhere more conducive to productive conversation before we continue. As I understand it, there are quite a few things you wish to discuss.”

\--

McCoy sat with his back against the stall, legs mostly straight out in front of him, taking one more pull from the cigarette before he was going to have to admit that it was gone. He spent a moment to stare at the black lines of dirt between the wrinkles of his knuckles, the caked on grit around his fingernails and tried hard to settle whether he hated it or not. His head back against the stall and his brain full of the saddest little story he’d heard in years—sadder than his own story, that was—and his body marked with bruises and rubbed raw by the impatience of a headstrong man.

There were footsteps, the shuffle of boots dragging on dirt and straw. Then the heavy sound of a coat whispering down shirt sleeves, the thump as it hit the ground. Suspenders were being popped loose and dropped aside. McCoy didn’t lean his head forward, tipped it to the side and opened his eyes. “How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty five,” Kirk said.

“How long have you been doing this?” McCoy asked. He knew that—least he knew what Scotty told him. He knew that it started a grave: this kid here had made a headstone and dragged it all the way to where Kelvin once stood and dropped it smack in the middle of the railroad. It was nothing but a petty crime but it had been the start.

“Shit,” Kirk said, “all my life. I heard it up in Narada that nobody’s seen Nero’s face since Kelvin—he’s going to come looking for me. He has to and when he does—”

“When he does, that Marshal’s going to have a damn good reason to hang you, huh?” The best reason there was, really. Killing was a sin and a crime and there wasn’t anything that would ever make it quite _right_ or quite _just_. McCoy had seen the damage done to bodies one too many times to have much of a stomach for pointless killing. That Marshal though—well, that was a different story.

Kirk shrugged, dropped down to his knees on the blanket and then back onto his ass, half on his side, looking at him. “Look,” he said, “about last night…”

McCoy put his hand up to stop that conversation before it got started. He made it a habit not to talk about it. There was no reason to break good habits now. “Nero’s taken out every man that’s ever gone up against him. What makes you think you’re going to be any different?”

“I’m not afraid of him.”

“What about your men?” McCoy asked. He stubbed the cigarette out against the dirt and spit on it for good measure.

“When it comes to it—I go alone. It’s my fight.” He flopped back on the blanket. “Get some sleep, Bones.”

“Bones?” McCoy repeated.

“That’s what I said,” Kirk mumbled. He rolled over and faced the wall. It was an interesting move because it gave McCoy all the space he needed to lay, to get comfortable, to put nothing but space between them. It gave him the opportunity to run if he wanted to try his luck. He didn’t even know where the hell he was or which way he should head if he wanted to go anyway.

He moved down, laying on his side with his coat as a blanket and his arm as a pillow and tried to lull himself to sleep. It didn’t come easy—everything was loud in a hush-hush-quiet way here. The animals moving in their stalls were obnoxious but Sulu and Pup up in the hayloft arguing about sharing blankets was a dull whisper of annoyance. He thought, if he listened hard enough, he could hear Scotty lighting matches to stare at the tintype of his girl.

Kirk sat up when McCoy was almost asleep. “Sulu,” he said in not much more than a whisper.

“I hear it,” Sulu returned in the same soft voice. “Pup.” Then they were all moving. Kirk didn’t bother telling McCoy to stay where he was and wasn’t surprised when McCoy followed after him as he went toward the doors of the barn. The horses were moving restlessly now.

“Just one,” Sulu called from the blackness.

Kirk nodded and crouched by the door with his gun drawn. Pup was up on the edge of the loft, laying along the edge with both guns pointed at the door. “Keep your head down, Bones.”

McCoy pushed himself against the wall and waited—it was fast heartbeats before he finally heard the sound of a horse approaching fast and no time at all before the doors burst open with a woman’s shriek that sounded a lot like “Montgomery!” and everything was a confused mess. A shriek, a struggle, and then the bright flash of light that burned brighter than daylight inside. It was a dark-skinned woman with a knife draw and pressed back against Sulu’s throat even as he held his sword to hers.

“Uhura!” Kirk said.

She was wearing the Marshal’s long duster, her hands and dress were caked with drying blood, her teeth were brilliant white—bare and clenched. She threw the knife at Kirk. “You bastard!” she shrieked and threw herself at him.

“Whoa now,” Scotty called and caught her by the waist, his arms were big around her little waist as she twisted and fought to get her clawing hands on Kirk. “Whoa, what happened?”

Kirk picked up the knife off the ground and ran his thumb across the blood on the handle.

“Gaila’s dead!” Uhura shouted. “Gaila’s dead and Spock knows and they burned down my saloon. They burned it down and they would have killed us all if I hadn’t—” She let herself be turned, let herself be pulled into the embrace against Scotty, face against his shirt as he held her tight like he could squeeze her fear out of her.

“I told you,” McCoy said.

“What are we going to do, Captain?” Pup whispered.

“Scotty, take Uhura inside—Mama’ll take care of her.” Kirk clenched his hand around his knife and tucked his gun back in the holster. He caught the reins of the horse and pulled him over to ease him.

“That’s the Marshal’s horse,” McCoy said.

“Captain,” Sulu said.

“I’m thinking,” Kirk said back. He looked so damn young standing next to the big black horse with his fingers tangled in his mane. Nobody that was old enough to make decisions that could end in death. Why the hell this band of idiots followed him with all the blind devotion of a bunch of motherless puppies McCoy couldn’t begin to understand.

Pup fidgeted, “Captain? Was it him?”

Sulu looked at Pup out of the corner of his eyes—mean look that said without saying that there was only one man cruel enough to kill a prostitute and burn down a saloon. One man—this man—the man that they’d been hunting with taunts and petty crimes for years.

Scotty returned with a grim shiver of hate in his shoulders. “That bastard,” he spat, “that son of a bitch. That—” He hit the side of a stall with his fist so the sound of it echoed like a impotent roll of thunder through the close dry air. “Captain,” was more of a plea than a question. Scotty wasn’t asking what they would do, he was demanded that they do—anything, something, whatever thing they’d planned for this moment.

“It could be a trap,” Sulu said.

“Oh, it’s a trap,” Kirk agreed.

“Then we don’t—then we’re not going to go?” Pup asked.

“He killed Gaila, Captain,” Scotty said. “That’s got to mean something to you. God-damn it—we can’t just let him get away with it.”

“If it’s a trap than its suicide,” Sulu stated.

McCoy watched Kirk stroking the horse’s neck. It was a beautiful animal, really, the sort of thing you’d expect the son of a politician to have. Fine taste in animal, really. Kirk closed his eyes and let out a little breath. “It’s a trap,” he said, “but it’s as close as we’ve got to him in years. We’ve planning to take the train for months.”

“I say we take it,” Scotty said, “I say we blow it all the way back to Narada where it came from compliments of the Engineer.”

Kirk barely smiled, looked over at the other two.

Pup shrugged, “Whatever you think, Captain.”

Sulu slid his sword back into its scabbard. “If you go, I go,” he said.

Kirk nodded. “Then we go.”

\--

They didn’t sleep the night before. Not that they’d ever been this close before—they’d never been anywhere near this close before. Other scrapes, other maybes, other possibilities that this time, just maybe, this coach might have the smug-smiling-murdering-bastard in it. In the end, it never did. In the end, the closest they’d ever gotten to Nero was a bottle of the fancy perfume he bought his women that they’d lit on fire.

This was—

Sulu sat in the gray shadows of the near dawn, sorting his chemicals out of little glass bottles and grinding leaves. McCoy watched him from a distance; he asked him quiet questions and got silent answers.

Pup polished the guns, checked the bullets again and again and scooted his way over to sit next to Kirk on the bales of straw and look over the maps. The kid was the best compass Kirk had ever had—but he was still a kid.

“You don’t have to,” Kirk said.

“You’re not leaving me out,” Pup said back.

Scotty packed his bag full of things that would explode and left it sitting in the empty place he should have been laying. He would be in the house now, or out on the porch, holding hands with his lady. When he came back, it would be filled with hate and fire.

Kirk dug in his own gut to find it—hate. He had always hated Nero. Fire, that burned through his veins until he was sick with the taste of it in his mouth, just _sick_. In the end, he sat the whole night had felt nothing at all but the tingle in his fingertips that kept shocking him like _so close,_ so close, _so close_.

Nobody ate breakfast.

“You’re all a bunch of fools,” Mama said.

Kirk left them in the yard to get fussed at, to get their horses ready, and went through the house to where Pike sat in his chair. He knelt in front of him; hand over his old man’s hand. “He’s here,” he whispered.

Pike’s eyes moved, first to the side and then the other before they found him in the middle. “Be smarter, Jimmy,” Pike said, “I know,” he tried to work his fingers out so they could pat the back of Kirk’s hands, “you can be. Be smarter—be faster.” Pike rattled a gasping breath. “Be _better_.”

His mother wasn’t so easy to say goodbye to—she knew the same as Pike knew that this could be it. Kirk had been pushing for years and years and they’d never been so close as they were now. His mother held onto him like she could keep him there.

“I’m coming back,” he said.

“You look so much like your father,” was her tearful voice in his ear. She let him go and hugged Pup, then Sulu and at last Scotty who hugged her tight and long. When she got to McCoy standing at the end of the line with his ripped vest and his blank expression she paused.

McCoy held his hand out. “It was a pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he said. They shook hands but she still didn’t know what to make of him.

Then they were all up on their horses. Kirk nodded them away and they left without another wave. It was a long ride but the weather was fine even if the company was silent. He stopped them just before they reached Enterprise. “Doc,” he said, “That way,” he pointed and Pup cleared his throat and motioned him farther to the east. “Alright, _that_ way is Enterprise. You’re a good man—you can decide for yourself what you want to tell the Marshal when you give him back his horse.”

“I thought you weren’t letting me go,” McCoy said.

“This isn’t your fight,” Kirk said. He just didn’t ask men to fight with him when it wasn’t theirs. One way or another his crew had reasons to hate Nero. They had reasons to fight by him and he was willing enough to allow them that right. He’d given them the choice.

“All the same,” Pup said, “if you’re interested, the train’s due to come in right over there,” he pointed past Enterprise, to the west, “in about an hour.” He grinned.

“Don’t encourage him,” Sulu said. He pulled the doctor’s bag off his saddle and threw it at McCoy.

Kirk looked at the doctor while the others started to ride away, pulled the reins on his horse that was impatient to follow and offered a half smile. “Sorry about your ass,” he said because he couldn’t think of a single damn better thing to say. “Should’ve found something—oil or something—better, drunk. You know how that goes.”

McCoy rolled his eyes. “Maybe next time.”

Kirk grinned, “Yeah, maybe next time.” Then he let the horse run because it wanted to, because it knew where it needed to go and McCoy was just the man he left behind him. Probably better off for it. There was something to that doctor that he wasn’t quite showing but that didn’t mean Kirk trusted him to hold his own if things went bad.

When he caught up to them on the short hill looking down at the set of tracks, they were all sharing the uneasy laughter of the last minute before a losing battle. Kirk pulled his horse to a stop next to them and stared down at the railroad.

“Sulu,” Kirk said, “If something should happen to me—you take care of my Mama.”

“Yes, sir,” Sulu said.

“Scotty, you take Uhura somewhere and make a proper lady out of her, you hear?”

“Aye, Captain.”

“Pup,” Kirk said and he looked down at the kid. Chekov was leaning forward to look back at him, still wearing that string of pearls around his neck and the doctor’s tie around his elbow. Kirk just grinned. “Do something with yourself—something better than picking locks and cheating at cards.”

“Nothing better than doing what you’re good at, Captain,” Pup said.

Right. Then they moved.

\--

The salt shaker was nothing that Spock might have considered to be otherwise impressive. Nero’s apparent preoccupation with its presence on his desk proved to be something—unusual. While they spoke briefly over the list of grievances that Nero felt he had against the outlaw commonly known as _Captain_ , the man stared again and again at the shaker. Spock recorded the grievances and offered brief and technically incomplete answers as to his knowledge of the alleged crimes.

“I may have heard,” Nero said as he shifted in his seat, “you are aware of Captain’s supposedly _secret_ identity.” He laid his cane across his lap and let his gloved fingers slip down the slick polished wood for a moment. It was a contemplative stare that challenged Spock to deny the truth.

“I was unaware that the outlaw, Captain, had a secret identity,” Spock returned.

Nero looked at the salt shaker again. Perhaps it was that it was an anomaly that drew his attention. “I know a thing or two about you, son.” His man—guard, perhaps—at his side stared fixedly at Spock with an air of antagonism that was uncalled for at this neutral meeting. “You’re a politician’s son. I hate politicians—a bunch of men in fancy coats that sit around and debate the fate of the rest of us? They make laws and regulations and profit from the hard work and sweat of the decent, common man.”

“My father is irrelevant to this investigation,” Spock said.

When Nero smiled the man at his side pushed his coat back to expose the gleaming handle of his revolver. Spock kept his hands on the desk and did nothing more than note the action with a slight nod before putting his attention back on Nero. “You have been such a disappointment to me,” Nero said.

“As we have just met, I cannot help but feel your judgment is somewhat premature,” Spock said.

Nero did laugh but it was nothing more than a ruse that allowed him opportunity to reach his cane out and knock the salt shaker to the floor. It spilled across the wood when it landed and the man looked down at it without pity. The action was nothing more than that of a spoiled child. “I’m willing to give you a second chance,” Nero said. He glanced at the man at his side; the man held open a pocket watch for his boss to look at. “Yes, as we speak, my train is crossing the tracks to the north of Enterprise. If I am correct, Captain will make an attempt to rob my train.”

“Is it a passenger train?” Spock asked.

“It is advertised to be carrying goods, however, at the last moment, I added additional passenger cars. The surprise will be—somewhat unfortunate for Captain, I believe. With so many witnesses to his crime, surely you’ll find one willing to testify against the criminal.”

Spock kept silent.

“Of course,” Nero said as he moved to stand. His man handed him his hat and shook his coat for him to slip his arms into. “That is, if there are any witnesses left. I do wonder if he’ll check all the cars before he lets that heathen dog of his set them on fire.” Once he had his coat on he looked down at the salt shaker again.

Spock stood because it was polite. “I will investigate the matter—should I find that a crime has been committed.”

Nero only smiled. “Of course, Marshal. Of course.”

\--

Scotty took out the tracks long before the train was due to come. Most of the time the sight of the tracks being out was enough to slow and stop the trains. When it didn’t, it derailed them and that was more of a disaster than the simpler alternative. It was why Kirk never went after trains with passengers—too many opportunities for things to go wrong.

When the train came it was already slowing before it should have been able to see the tracks. It seemed to be moving at half speed and then a quarter and then it shuddered to a stop in the distance. Kirk felt bumps raise up on his arms—Pup was shifting nervously on his feet just behind Kirk’s left shoulder.

“Why’d it stop?” Pup whispered.

Kirk moved forward because he never went back. He held his hand up to keep Pup from following him and that left the kid standing there with his poncho flapping in the wind, shifting on his big feet. The train shuddered again, steam let out and there was the sound like chatter. Chatter of womenfolk discussing something too fast to be heard by the slow ears of men—Kirk felt a sense of dread in his gut long before he got close enough to see the windows in the back cars. There were frilly elbows and then faces peering out through the panes of the windows.

There weren’t supposed to be people on this train.

Nero was willing to burn a town to get what he wanted.

Then there was a shrill whistle. “Hey!” was an unfamiliar voice.

He turned his face toward the sound and there stood a man on the top of the train car with a rifle pressed against his shoulder and the black scroll of a mark across his face. “Mr. Nero wants to salute you for being a real pain in the ass.”

It wasn’t going to end like this. Kirk looked back at the women staring and then over at Pup in the distance.

\--

The Marshal’s horse was too damn well behaved to be impatient under him. The saddle was hard and uncomfortable and the sun was hot enough that sweat was slipping down his back in fat drops. McCoy couldn’t figure out why the hell he was still sitting there.

Decisions were those things that you thought you made with your conscious brain—loyalty was something you gave to men that deserved it—risk was something better taken by men that had nothing to lose.

So why was he still there, halfway between Enterprise and a fate sure to end in blood? That cocky blond bastard had done nothing to earn respect or loyalty and he’d asked for neither and offered nothing but the certainty of fighting a man that deserved to be fought. He’d done nothing but kidnap McCoy, get him drunk and fuck him.

That way would end in death—McCoy liked to tell himself he had plenty to live for. Like a half-successful business lancing boils and treating headaches. Announcing executed men to be dead. Spending his nights alone rewarming old dreams of a woman he’d left behind when he’d run away from that life. There was no going back; there was only this and the life that he was going to make here.

Maybe, there was a decision between what he was and what he wanted to be.

Really though, as he pulled at the reins and the horse pulled back, there was no decision to make. There was only the one that he’d made waiting to be acknowledged.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered as he slapped the horse into a gallop the way that Pup had pointed him.

\--

Spock crouched, one hand on the desk where the little grains rubbed under his fingertips and picked up the salt shaker off the floor. He was not a superstitious man but he had been raised by a superstitious woman. The matter of pinching the spilt salt and throwing it over his shoulder was a matter of honoring his mother’s traditions. He crouched next to the desk until the salt under his right hand was melting into his skin; he stared at the salt shaker that had been treated unfairly.

He looked at the cell where he had kept Pup after he caught him in the saloon here at Enterprise in the middle of a fight with three larger men that insisted he had stolen their whore and cheated at cards. The kid had been laughing as he made excuse after excuse about how they weren’t men enough and gambling was invented in Russia. Spock stood, set the shaker on the desk and looked back toward the door.

The train would be here soon.

His parents would be arriving shortly after.

Spock could not name the feeling that moved in him. Men had called it intuition, yes, a _gut feeling_ , something that Spock had never trusted before in his life. Still, he moved to the door, pushed it open: “Olson!” he shouted.

“Sir?”

“Get the deputies.”

Spock pulled the rifle off the wall. It never hurt to be prepared.

\--

Kirk screamed: “ _Run, Pup!_ ” because it might have been the last thing he had breath to say. He didn’t move back because forward was where the man with the gun was. He ran forward because the last damn thing he was going to do was stand still to be shot at. The bullet hit the dirt at his heels and he threw himself at the hot metal of the ladder leading up to the top of the train car.

There was too much noise.

The man with the rifle fell past him and hit the dirt hard—a door was sliding open—women were chattering like birds, shouting through open windows—the wind whistled—a gun cocked and Kirk’s heart was throbbing like a drum in his skull. He reached his hand up to grab the edge of the roof of the train car and Sulu grabbed his wrist.

“Trap,” he said.

No, fucking, kidding.

Kirk got his knee up as Sulu yanked him back and they fell flat on their backs and only barely managed to get out of the way of the rain of bullets. “Where’s Scotty!” Kirk shouted over the noise as they rolled to the side. Sulu was pulling his gun out of the holster, Kirk had his in one hand, chin against his chest, shoulders hunched, thinking it was stupid to stay there and be shot at.

“On the ground!” Sulu shouted back.

“Engineer!” Kirk shouted.

“Aye!”

“Cover!” Kirk shouted.

There was no acknowledgement to the statement but the scream and shriek of bullets tearing through the side of the train car stopped for a breath. Women were shrieking now. Something smelled like it was burning—burning?—he rolled onto his stomach and up to his knees.

“Pup?” Sulu asked.

A round ball soared over their heads and hit the dirt—it sizzled and then popped. Kirk got on his knees to peer over the edge and all he saw was gun barrels.

“Gotta do better than that!” he shouted as he went flat again.

\--

The sound of bullets was easy to hear even from that far away. He only spurred the horse on faster—harder—damn near ran Chekov down as he ran away from the sound. McCoy jerked the reins, half fell off the horse and grabbed the kid by the sleeve.

“What?” he demanded and meant _what’s happening_.

“It’s an ambush. I’ve got to get the horses.”

McCoy looked back at the sound. “How many are there?”

“A hundred—I don’t know. I’ve got to get the horses.” Pup was pointing back at where he must have left the animals. “We’ll need them, to get away. Won’t we?”

“Here,” McCoy said and threw the reins at Pup. Then he was running on foot while the kid ran away and that sound of gunfire just got louder and louder in his head. Women were screaming between the volleys and it stank—stank like gunpowder and burnt metal. He crept up slow, crouching low to the ground while he watched.

Eight men with rifles and revolvers on one side of the engine and four more on the other side—they had to have the rest of them pinned on the top except for the knoll by the side where another two men were pointing their guns as they inched closer. McCoy shifted on his feet and went that way first—moved low to the ground and pushing out of his mind again and again everything he remembered about frightened little girls whispering worries at his back in the muddy dark forests of Georgia.

No, no. The west was wide and bright and dry.

He pushed himself up to his feet when he was close enough. “Excuse me,” he shouted at the closest man.

“What the hell,” one of them started to say and the other wasted no time lifting his rifle to do the shooting first.

Stupid plan, really. Should have thought this one through better—still he grabbed the barrel of the talking man’s gun and yanked him forward while the other tried to shoot him and missed at three fucking feet away.

Scotty was there with a war cry that would have done old Stonewall proud. He threw himself at the shooter and knocked him over, dragged him back across the knoll and into the pit that they must have dug out for themselves. A volley of shots rang against the dirt—two of them hit the man McCoy was wrestling with and none of them hit him. He got the rifle in the end as he fell head first into the pit and landed hard on a pile of dynamite.

The man, Nero’s man, was punching Scotty in the face. McCoy rolled over again, two hands around the barrel of a rifle, on his knees and used it like a club because he had no time and no better ideas. It did the job, knocked the man unconscious.

“Doc,” Scotty said.

“Give me the fucking shotgun,” he said.

\--

“I have been informed,” Spock said loudly enough that they could hear him clearly, “that there is a possible threat against Mr. Nero’s train. We will ride to the nearest track to investigate the credibility of this accusation. I do not expect to encounter hostility; however, you will arm yourselves.”

The men nodded, licked their lips and rubbed their hands together at the possibility of violence. That was the way of the west: The fascination with the gun. Every man wanted to be faster, stronger and more deadly than the next. He watched them stroking their revolvers and felt nothing but impatience for them.

Deep in his gut that feeling twisted and told him: _you’re too late_.

\--

“Sulu,” Kirk shouted.

They had nothing and he didn’t need Sulu to tell him that, he knew it as well as anyone. There was a sliver of space in the middle, if they wrapped their arms around one another and ducked their heads the bullets whizzed over head. Hot enough he could feel the sharp snap of them against his clothes.

The next blast was off beat from the others, accompanied by shouts of shock and surprise—the right side went silent while the left kept right on shooting in rounds—they had to stop to reload eventually. They had to—and yet—

Kirk was half deaf from the sound.

“Captain!”

Sulu jerked his head up.

“Bones!” Kirk shouted back and had never loved a man more for a stupider reason than he loved that cranky assed doctor bastard. He rolled to the right—fell right off the side of the train and hit the ground hard with his hip and bad arm. Sulu dropped next to him, landed on his feet and started hitting the one man still standing after the scatter shot from the shotgun cracked open across McCoy’s arm. “You came back.”

McCoy snapped the gun shut. “Aren’t you lucky?”

“Good fuck, me, good fuck,” Kirk said to Sulu.

Scotty was there with two rifles, handing one of them to Sulu while they crouched behind the engine of the train and waited for the men on the other side to realize the rules had just changed. “Captain,” Scotty said.

“Leave them alive,” Kirk said. He ran his tongue across his lips.

\--

Sulu went right, Scotty went left. Captain crawled up to the ladder and pulled himself up one handed, got his feet on the bottom run and shimmied his way right back up to where he’d been. One of the bleeding, still living men on the ground—with no sense of gratitude, really, McCoy could have killed him if it weren’t so senseless—was aiming his gun at Kirk’s back.

McCoy kicked his hand and smashed the butt of the shotgun against his face. He grabbed the guns and threw them out of the way—far back toward the knoll into the dirt. “Bunch of Yankees,” he muttered under his breath and crept up close to the engine.

The gunfire started again—whoops and yells and nothing but bullets tearing through the sky. Something was burning in the distance. It smelled like a fuse, like gunpowder. He turned his head toward it; saw a man with a long coat running the other way as fast as he could get his feet to move. There was a spark flaring from the ground snaking a direct path to the cars at the end of the line.

“Captain!” he screamed.

“What?”

“What’s in the cars at the end!”

“Women!” Kirk shouted back.

McCoy might never have run so fast in his life—forgot that he needed the shotgun because it hit the ground and he was halfway toward that spark before he realized he was weaponless.

\--

The sound of the explosion was loud enough to be heard in Enterprise where his men still stood next to their horses with dreams of gunfights. Spock had been forced to secure a mount from an unreliable source and he did not favor it. The horse was unsteady and skittish.

The explosion shook the windows, shook the ground, and shook his men until they were wide eyed and staring.

Spock did not remain to be sure that they followed. He turned his horse toward the sound and spurred it into a gallop. There was the thunderous beat of men on horses following him but his ears were turned toward the sound of a fire burning he could not hear. The smoke was black in the sky—thick, greasy black—

Nero’s smile returned to him in that moment and the ease with which he had insinuated the Captain would ignite the train. (No, Spock’s gut said with a sick twist, Captain would never have done so. But a man that burned down a town and assaulted a lawman—now he might.)


	4. Chapter 4

One moment Kirk was crawling on his belly across the top of the car, not too worried about why Bones was shouting questions at him. He was aiming his gun at the man that was aiming at Sulu and in the next instant—  
  
Fire. Sound. The wrench of metal and the sudden feeling of being thrown as if he weighed nothing at all. He hit the ground on his shoulder, hit his head felt his feet flop over and he ended up on his back with no breath and stars floating in his vision. Everything was vibrating from the force of the explosion, from a second crash.  
  
Kirk pulled at the dirt. His body was numb as he rolled—on his side, with no weapons; felt like his ears were bleeding, he was deaf. There was no sound at all, no sound but _heat_. Heat like flames licking the sky. Flames bursting from the broken wreckage of the passenger cars.  
  
Flames covering the unfamiliar lumps on the ground. (Were those bodies?)  
  
Flames.  
  
\--  
  
McCoy was thrown back by the blast, too far to stop it, too close—he flew back. He hit hard enough it ripped his shirt sleeve clear off his arm and tore his skin until his blood was wet down his hand. It washed hot over him, like steam cooking his skin everywhere it was bare to the air.  
  
“Nooooooo!” was a scream.  
  
It might have been Scotty. It might have been Sulu. Oh hell, it might have been the Captain himself. The train tipped: The weight of the fallen cars on the end pulled it over—one after the other the cargo cars crashed and the engine hit last.  
  
Like spitting on a man that had already been knocked over, there was the distant sound of gun fire and Bones ran toward that. His muscles were numb, his ears were ringing with the sound of the flames eating—eating—eating—there were no screams in that fire—he picked up the shotgun he’d dropped, skidding across the loose dirt around the tracks and around, past the fallen engine.  
  
Sulu was aiming his gun at a man aiming at him.  
  
Scotty was on his knees red blood in the dirt as he clutched his left fist on his right hand. There was a tall man with two guns pointed at his head. McCoy didn’t think too hard about it. He hit the man with a swing of the coach gun, kicked him onto his back when he fell, put a foot against his chest and pointed both loaded barrels of the gun at him.  
  
“Captain,” Scotty croaked.  
  
Across the distance, stumbling toward the flames—Captain was just staring, mouth open and eyes wet—there were tears down his dirty cheeks and something helpless in the way he stumbled another step and fell forward to his knees.   
  
McCoy kicked the man pinned under him, knocked him out and dropped the gun to grab Scotty’s hand. His middle finger was shot half off—there was no saving it, there was no clean way to amputate it here. He yanked at the already ripped shirt on his arm and wrapped it as best he could around the damage.   
  
The horses galloped up then, Pup in the lead.  
  
“What happened?” he said.  
  
There were bodies on the ground. Bits of bodies on the ground.  
  
Pup dismounted—stared—and ran for the car that was still cracking with heat. Sulu ran after him—there were still men with guns here. They were moving now. McCoy grabbed Scotty by the shoulders and pulled him up. “My house,” he said when he pushed him toward the horse.  
  
Sulu caught Pup by the arm, shouted: “They’re all dead.”  
  
“Follow Scotty,” McCoy shouted at them. He grabbed Kirk’s horse, ran for the man still sitting on his knees while he watched the car burn. “We can’t stay,” he said as he pushed the man, pulled him, “we have to go.”  
  
“They’re dead,” Kirk shouted as he clutched McCoy’s arms, “they’re dead.”  
  
\--  
  
The train cars were still on fire when Spock arrived at the scene. There were men laying in the dirt clutching their wounds and moaning over their fates. They were Nero’s men—identified by the signature black marks on their faces. Spock rode past them, slid off his horse and walked toward the burning wreckage.  
  
There were corpses on the ground in pieces. There was the smoke-blackened bit of lace flapping in the wind, held down only by the soft, white woman’s hand and the no longer bleeding stump of flesh and bone that had once connected it to a woman. Spock thought of his mother first—it was a selfish reaction and he could not quell it, the thought rose in him as a blind and furious hate. It made his boots stumble as he moved through the burnt and bloodied ground to the fallen train car.   
  
No evidence could be gained from this. It had been incinerated beyond use. Spock rubbed his hands together, smeared the greasy black soot from the air against his own skin and then turned back.   
  
The injured men, the so-called witnesses were staring at him. The deputies were staring at him. He straightened his shoulders as he strode back across the wreckage. He sidestepped the bodies and plucked his handkerchief from its pocket to wipe his fingers as best as he could.  
  
“You will tell me now what happened here.” He did not need for them to tell him what happened. There were bullet holes riddling the engine car.   
  
“It was Captain,” one man said, “he was crazy.”  
  
“They were all crazy,” the second man said. “Especially the one with the shotgun.”  
  
Spock considered them liars. It was important, however, that they believed he believed them. “You will give me descriptions of each of the men.”  
  
“There were women in that car,” a third man said, “that Captain—he killed them all.” Yet, this man spoke with the flat disregard for human life as if he were discussing a distasteful whiskey.  
  
“The descriptions, if you would.”  
  
\--  
  
“Fuck,” Pup said first. The kitchen table was no surgery room and this knife he had was not a bone saw. The whiskey he had to give Scotty wasn’t going to do a damn thing to ease the pain. Not a damn thing. Sulu was at the fireplace turning the poker over again and again in the embers until it was searing hot and glowing. “Do you have to?”  
  
“There’s no saving it,” McCoy said. He tore his vest off, threw it on the ground and wiped his sweating forehead on his sleeve. They’d barely made it back here. Scotty had fallen off his horse in the alley between his house and the next, Sulu had pulled him in while Pup attended to the horses. Kirk was still deaf, still white with shock and sitting at the end of the table watching the blood oozing across the wood with blank blue eyes. “Pup,” he said. He pointed at the strap on the wall. It was thick and leather and something to bite on. McCoy held it out to Scotty who seemed to understand.   
  
Sulu didn’t look but Pup stared.  
  
“Ready?” McCoy asked.  
  
“No,” Scotty whispered. Sulu said he was and McCoy set the knife in place, picked up the small hammer he’d found in the useless box of tools he kept. This wasn’t surgery—there wasn’t time. The Marshal would know where to look first and his kitchen was second. McCoy waited until Scotty had the strap between his teeth before he brought the knife down and hit it once—hard enough to crack what was left of the bone—with the hammer. The scream was loud enough even through the strap of leather, Scotty jerked back and left his ruined finger behind him, blood fount fresh across his clothes and the floor as he cursed until he was exhausted.  
  
McCoy handed him the whiskey and Sulu brought the hot poker. Barbarian medicine. Scotty gulped and gulped at the whiskey and held his hand out again.   
  
This time, Pup didn’t look and Sulu did. The stench of roasting human flesh made the kitchen into hell. Scotty whimpered as tears streamed down his face and McCoy handed the poker back and went to his cabinet to pull out a second bottle.   
  
“What about the Captain?” Pup asked.  
  
“You hurt?” McCoy asked Sulu.  
  
“No,” Sulu said. That was a lie or it wasn’t. However he was hurt it wasn’t so bad. “Pup, help me with Scotty.” They moved him to the sitting room and put him on the fancy couch. They pulled the curtains and sat in the dark and didn’t talk about what had happened.  
  
“Can you hear?” McCoy asked Kirk.  
  
\--  
  
Yes. Sound was coming back. It was through a tunnel, filled with water, wavering at the edges, but he was coming back. It was all coming back now. McCoy picked up the knife, the hammer and the finger and threw one in the dish pan, the other on the floor and the third into the fire. He rubbed his bloody fingers through his filthy hair and stood with his hands on his hips.  
  
“I’m,” Kirk said but it didn’t matter, really, “not the only criminal here.”  
  
“I told you that bastard was going to—” Bones—Kirk liked that name for him, it suited him—shouted.  
  
“No,” Kirk cut in, “Not Nero. _You_.”  
  
That shut him up fast; Bones recoiled and then looked at the fire and said nothing. Silence dragged and Kirk thought he must have been bleeding somewhere. It was alright, it was coming back into focus now. They were going to have to run—maybe—the Marshal was going to see that massacre, Nero was going to blame Kirk and it was hang or run.   
  
Kirk wasn’t sure which one got him what he wanted.   
  
“I’m not criminal,” Bones said at last.  
  
“You do what’s right,” Kirk said.  
  
“Sometimes that means keeping your sisters safe when the bastard Yankees come to burn your house for something you ain’t even done. Sometimes that means learning to live in the trees and how to catch and kill your own food before you even know how to spell— it doesn’t matter. Your men need you.”  
  
Yeah. Kirk stood up, lapped at his dirty lips and walked toward the sitting room. He barely even recognized them. Except Pup—not even Pup. Pup wasn’t a bright eyed little boy anymore. He was a heavy old man now, weighed down by cruelty. “I want you to go,” he said, “I want all of you to get on your horse and every goes a different way—ride as hard as you can, get as far away as you can. Don’t come back.”  
  
“Captain,” Sulu said.  
  
“Captain!” Pup objected.  
  
“Those are orders,” he said. He turned but he wasn’t sure where he was going—only knew that he ended up in a room with a bed and a porcelain bowl half filled with water too many days old. There was a dresser with a comb and a vase and a gold wedding ring sitting forgotten. The door never closed, Bones was in the way.  
  
It was a shock of pain when the slap landed—the twisted look of anger on McCoy’s face hurt more—and then another smack that made his blood turn hot in his veins. He caught the bastard by the wrist, felt the grind of bones and the grit of—and pushed him back against the wall.  
  
Bones pulled him close, pulled him right up close, arms around him, urging him on, limp and willing and mouth open—tongue hot, smelled like smoke, gunpowder and death—he tasted like spit-watered blood and whiskey. A hot body, a warm body, a strange body to push against. He kissed him so hard his head hurt and pulled, ripped, tore at his shirt. Skin was skin and there were no wounds here. No broken places—Kirk kissed him harder, tore at his mouth as the feeling came back again.  
  
Sound roared into life and he _remembered_ the last shriek of surprise before the fire ate all the noise.  
  
Nero.  
  
He twisted his fist in ripped clothe and Bones murmured a moan that vibrated like a whimper against his tongue. There was a hand in his hair, against the back of his neck. Kirk pulled back, wanted to say that he was going to kill that bastard that he had never wanted him dead more, that this was it and it was over and he could do it now. He wanted to say _thank you_ , he wanted to say _I might love you, just right now, just this minute_ so he could have said it before he died.  
  
Bones pulled him back, silenced his scattered thoughts and his half spit out words. Turned them, pushed him against the wall and rubbed his broad palms up and down his chest like he was checking for holes. Over his ribs, over his stomach, back to his arms, to his neck, around his face as the kiss slowed to something that hurt.  
  
Something ached.  
  
“I took the liberty,” was the too suddenly loud voice of the Marshal from far too close, “of letting myself in. I believe you are aware that, given circumstances, I cannot ignore your presence. I will require one of you to accompany me.”  
  
Bones’ fists held his shirt as he stared at him. (Don’t go, don’t go, don’t you fucking dare.)   
  
This was how it went. It was always going to end here.  
  
\--  
  
The judge was waiting in his office when he returned from the still burning wreckage. He sat stiffly in Spock’s seat and regarded him with a glare. Komack had never, exactly, been a forgiving man. He had, however, always been a man easy to sway and convince. There were things he liked better than the law and while he bothered Spock with his lack of upstanding morals: He was a useful tool.   
  
“I understand that there has been an attack on Mr. Nero’s train and that several passengers were killed.”   
  
“There was,” Spock agreed.  
  
“I understand that Captain is responsible.”  
  
“That much is not immediately evident,” Spock countered. “While he was at the scene of the crime there is insufficient proof that he was involved in setting the explosives that ultimately led to the deaths of the passengers.”  
  
Komack stood and crossed from behind the desk. “You have witnesses that say it was Captain, don’t you?”  
  
Spock could not answer without confirming that there were witnesses and that they did appear to agree that Captain had gone mad after years of carefully controlled and mostly nonviolent attacks on stages. He regarded Komack closely and took note of the shimmer of a new watch chain that led into his pocket. The man would not have been so difficult to buy. Loyalty was often wrought through fear. “I have reason to doubt the validity of the witness’s claim.”  
  
“That’s not your place, Marshal. You go and find the bastard that is responsible for this or I will have you run out of town on a rail and I don’t care who your father is.”  
  
Spock inclined his head to show that he understood and waited until the judge excused himself before he took a breath. He let it sigh through his mouth again before he moved to place the rifle back in its place. He stood behind his desk for a moment and considered the alternatives.  
  
In the end, he had none. For his own protection and in the interest in settling this _at last_ , Captain would need to be brought in. Spock fixed his badge on his vest and straightened his hair and checked his gun before he left his office.  
  
The witnesses described Dr. McCoy as being a barbarian that had shot and beat and nearly killed more men than the others. His ferocity had surprised them and yet, Spock could not find himself surprised. McCoy had been a child during the war—like Captain himself, he had seen cruelty when he was too young to put it out of his mind. That he had chosen to stand by the Captain was somewhat surprising but his actions once the decision was made were not.  
  
Spock didn’t go to the doctor’s office. They were too smart for that. He went to the doctor’s house and let himself in through the still open door. He found them in the sitting room. The child, Pup, sitting in a quiet daze. The Engineer was clutching a bottle of whiskey in his sleep and cradling a heavy wrapped hand against his chest. The third man stared at him with hate that knew no boundaries.  
  
Such loyalty amazed him.  
  
“I took the liberty,” Spock said loudly, “of letting myself in. I believe you are aware that, given circumstances, I cannot ignore your presence. I will require one of you to accompany me. If the rest were to escape during the apprehending of one suspect I believe that would be unfortunate. I will, of course, be more concerned with retaining the one rather than pursuing the many.”  
  
“You always get the wrong man,” Pup snarled at him.  
  
“Pup,” the Snake whispered.  
  
Captain himself came from the short hall leading back to the bedroom. He didn’t speak to his men, just held his hand out to stay their complaints and objections. He stared at Spock. “You know that wasn’t us that did that, Marshal.”  
  
The doctor came behind him. Their clothes were torn and open. The doctor crossed his arms over his chest and looked to the side rather than at the pair of them.  
  
“I have no proof to condemn or free you,” Spock said.  
  
“Where’s your gun?” Captain asked.  
  
“Do I require it?”  
  
Here, Captain shrugged. “No. Not really.” Then he nodded at the door.   
  
“Doctor,” Spock said, “I would advise you to leave as well as you were quite aptly described both in physical features and temperament by several witnesses.” He caught Captain by the elbow and escorted him from the house and through the streets.  
  
They were quiet until the bars shut and the key was turned. Then Captain caught him by the wrist.  
  
“You’re not half bad, Marshal. Not half good—but not half bad.”  
  
Spock accepted the compliment. “I believe Komack will insist on a quick execution. You will not receive a proper trial if you receive one at all.”   
  
“Aw,” Captain said, “Did someone buy your puppet judge from you?”  
  
It would be illogical to be offended by the statement when it was—despite being crude—aptly put. “It would appear so,” he said instead.  
  
\--  
  
Spock had perfect posture. Kirk wasn’t looking for it but it was hard to miss. The man sat perfectly straight at his desk and read his papers with the calm air of a man unburdened by a conscience. Kirk sat on the wooden board in the cell and watched him.  
  
It might have been easier to think if he were alone.   
  
It might have been that Kirk was tracing the pattern on Spock’s vest that was tailored to fit against his chest exactly. It was an interesting cut that showed his thin, broad shoulders and made his waist look even slimmer than it already was. From a purely physical standpoint, the Marshal was nothing to fear. Then again, there was the detachment with which he looked at the clock and then at him. “I imagine,” he said as he stood, “this will be your last meal. I customarily offer the condemned their choice.”  
  
“What did Pup want?” Kirk asked.  
  
“He had several choices I was unable to provide. Ultimately, he decided on steak,” Spock said.  
  
“What did the last man you actually had executed want?” Kirk asked. “The last man that really deserved it?”  
  
Spock’s eyebrow flinched at the statement. It was as close to an emotion as he had gotten in the three hours they’d shared this room. “I understand that you believe you are being unlawfully held. However, you are guilty of several offenses.”  
  
“Things I deserve to die for?” Kirk asked.  
  
“That matter is for the courts to decide.”  
  
Kirk rolled forward, feet on the ground and walked over to the bars. They were cold, metal and final in his fists as he looked through them. Spock’s eyes weren’t quite black just dark. Not soulless only removed and that was an interesting enough contrast. “You know this is wrong. Just drop your keys, right there, I’ll find a way to get them and you can tell whoever cares that I got away while you weren’t looking.”  
  
“That would be a lie,” Spock said.  
  
“Damn it!” Kirk shouted at him.  
  
“I am, quite frankly, surprised that some effort to affect your escape has not already taken place.” The statement soured in the air until Spock straightened his vest and cleared his throat. “Your choice in meals?”  
  
Kirk let his head fall forward against the bars and sighed. “I like chicken.” He went back to the uncomfortable board he’d been sitting on after Spock was gone. There were marks scratched into the wall from men that had been caught before him. Might have been one from Pup, might have been one from a dead man—he ran his finger across the scratches.  
  
He thought of Pike.  
  
He thought of his father.  
  
He thought of Nero, across the street in a fine and fancy hotel, looking out the windows, right at this jail, smiling at his victory.   
  
He thought of Bones.  
  
He thought with his arm across his eyes of a tall step and a short fall and what good the name _Kirk_ was going to be if he died as a criminal. There was a way out of this. There was a way to win—there was a way to be smarter and faster and better than a cruel bastard. Spock might be the key—he might not be.  
  
“You,” woke him from a sleep he was not aware he had fallen into, “are still here.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kirk agreed.  
  
Spock just didn’t know what to make of that. He opened the door and brought the tray in to set it on the barrel that served as a table. “I did not expect you to be here.” That was evident. He wanted to ask _where’s your crew_ so badly it was practically written in his eyes and he bit his tongue to keep from speaking.  
  
Kirk shrugged. “Where did you think I was going to go?”  
  
“If you remain here, you will die,” Spock said. The door to the cell was still open.  
  
“You’re the lawman, Spock. You’re the one that put me in here, now you’re telling me I should break out?” Kirk sat up and leaned in to get a good look at the dinner Spock had brought him. The man had gone all out—that must have cost a pretty penny. “You figure it’s going to rain tomorrow?”  
  
“I do not believe so,” Spock said.  
  
“Good,” Kirk said, “I would hate to be hung on a rainy day.”   
  
Spock walked toward the bars and then stopped and looked back at him. Then shook himself and caught the door of the cell and then stopped and looked back at him again. “Did you see Nero when he murdered your father?”  
  
“Yes,” Kirk said. He remembered that face in perfect detail; he remembered it better than he remembered his own father’s face. “What are you waiting for?”  
  
Spock looked at the door he was holding open and then pulled it shut and locked it again. “I will return shortly. If you require anything Deputy Olson is usually sleeping outside of the door and will respond should you shout loudly.”  
  
\--  
  
Now was the time when men sat and took stock of the situation. McCoy stood in the doorway between the room with the table and the one with the couch. He took stock of the situation and it went like this:  
  
Forty eight hours ago all he knew about a man called Captain was that he was dishonorably discharged cavalry that had been robbing stagecoaches with impunity for years. He was a ghoul and a monster and something like a beastie that could sneak in and then out again before anyone ever saw him. His crew were dirty immoral men that would as soon rob you blind as debauch your women.   
  
Maybe four hours ago he had made a rash decision based on nothing at all but a feeling. It was the right decision to have made, McCoy thought. Now he had a sitting room full of men that he couldn’t bring himself to regard as criminals and were nowhere near as close as friends. There was a man he couldn’t make his mind up about sitting in a jail set to die for the offense of standing up against a bad man.  
  
McCoy closed his eyes and hung his head.   
  
Nero might as well been those faceless Yankee soldiers that tore through his house and stole his family’s property, the ones that made the girls scream as they shouted lewd things at them, things that McCoy hadn’t even been old enough to understand. Nero was the men that burned the houses and fields and left them a chicken house to live in. McCoy had dreamed about killing those faceless men as he crouched watch over his sisters in the forest while the fires burned.   
  
It had been years since he thought of them. Getting married to a real nice lady, being a doctor, learning how to wash his face and comb his hair was supposed to kill all that. He wasn’t supposed to remember that forest or the open wound of red clay blown apart by mines or how he’d seen a man torn in half when he was a boy and he’d never forgotten.  
  
“We’re not,” Pup said when the clock chimed again from the shelf, “really going to leave him are we?”  
  
“I’m thinking,” Sulu said back. He was sitting cross legged near the couch with his sword across his lap. His shirt was torn, the tan of his skin dark in contrast to the dusty gold.   
  
“We can’t,” Pup said.  
  
“No we can’t,” McCoy agreed.   
  
Pup looked at him with hope. “Nero did this. Someone’s got to believe us—he killed all those people, he—”  
  
Scotty moaned on the couch, clutched the whiskey bottle a little tighter with his good hand and settled again. The longer he stayed unconscious the better off he’d be. Sulu watched him and then looked at Pup and how his hands weren’t quite steady this many hours later. The kid was barely seventeen, Scotty had said. Captain had caught him picking his pockets and taught him a few things and the boy had never left his side since.  
  
“We’re outnumbered,” Sulu said.  
  
“That doesn’t matter,” Pup said, “Captain would never leave us.”  
  
“I know, Pup,” Sulu said. He drew in a breath and held it.   
  
“Then we’re not leaving him. All we have to do is—we can just—” Pup looked back at his hands and picked at the dirt under his split nails. Scotty moaned on the couch again while they all sat and thought hard around the blank nothing of their options.  
  
“We need Spock,” McCoy said.  
  
“That bastard Marshal is the one that took him in—what good is he going to do?” Sulu demanded.   
  
“Spock knows we didn’t do this. He’s the best chance you’ve got—you don’t have your guns, you don’t have your explosives and you don’t have a plan.”  
  
“So we should follow yours? And beg the lawman to let Captain go just in case he changes his mind?”   
  
“He might,” Pup said.  
  
“No, he won’t,” Sulu stated flatly. “If he would then he wouldn’t have taken Captain in to start with. If he sees us he’ll arrest us. He already said that.” He looked at Scotty moving around again, watched him as the man opened his eyes and groaned in disappointment.  
  
“You ain’t half as pretty as I wanted you to be,” Scotty mumbled.  
  
McCoy looked at the sky darkening around the edge of the curtains. “I’ll go. If it doesn’t work—you haven’t lost anything.” He picked up his vest from the ground and pulled it on but didn’t button it. His second favorite coat was hanging by the door and he pulled it on.  
  
“I’ll go with you,” Pup said.  
  
“You’re idiots,” Sulu said.  
  
“What’s going on?” Scotty asked.  
  
“They’re going to beg the lawman to let Captain go—” Sulu sneered at him, at Pup for following him and reached back to help pull Scotty up to sitting. Scotty fought his way to his feet and wavered on his feet.  
  
“Get him something to eat,” McCoy said. “Look in the pantry, there should be something to eat in there—doesn’t matter what it is just make sure he eats or he’ll faint.” He went toward the door and Pup was at his elbow, trying to fix his poncho so it was halfway respectable and smooth his curls from where they were caked in a wave across his head. “Why are you going?”  
  
“I’m going in case begging doesn’t work,” Pup said.  
  
Right.  
  
\--  
  
Spock had not forgotten to meet his father and mother. He had been otherwise occupied with the trouble massacre that had taken place on the train. By the time he greeted them at the hotel dining room, his father had become resolute in thinking the worst and his mother had worried herself into a state of unrest.  
  
“I apologize,” he said, “I had an important matter that needed attending to.”  
  
“We assumed as much,” his father said. They shared half of a terse meal with no discussion on recent matters, their mutual well-being or the weather. When they had finished the final course, his father cleared his throat and wiped his mouth. “You are free to explain now.”  
  
“I find the matter to of an inconclusive nature,” Spock said.  
  
“You have a suspect in custody. It is already commonly known that he will be executed in the morning. I was given to understand that you were responsible for identifying him.” Sarek spoke with no hint of pride for the achievement and that was appropriate as Spock felt no hint of pride for it either.   
  
“Who gave you this understanding?” Spock asked.  
  
“A gentleman with a black mark on his face. He was introduced as—”  
  
“Mr. Nero,” Spock finished. He sat back in his seat and looked at the other guests. They were familiar looking to him, the same faces that had occupied this hotel for many days, those that would be here again tomorrow. Nero’s dark smile was not among them.  
  
“Yes,” Sarek said.  
  
“Spock,” his mother said, “what is it?”  
  
“I have several reasons to believe James Kirk did not commit the crime for which he is to be executed.” The words felt strange to them—to speak them in open acknowledgement of the indecision he felt. This outlaw should not have earned a name and yet there it was.  
  
“I was given to understand that the matter was closed. There were witnesses and a final ruling by Judge Komack. If you had objections, surely you should have mentioned them during the trial.” Sarek took a drink of his brandy and set the glass down again. “You were not aware of the trial?”  
  
“I was not,” Spock said, “you will excuse me?”  
  
“I will not,” Sarek answered, “you will explain yourself.”  
  
He could not explain himself, that was the trouble. His mother slid her hand across the table to touch the back of his and looked at him with her soft eyes. He had grown up in the image of his father because it was expected of him but he kept her close to his heart. As such, she always knew, without speaking, when he was troubled. “You can tell us.”  
  
Spock nodded once. “I believe Mr. Nero intentionally caused the train accident in an attempt to frame or otherwise murder Mr. Kirk as he murdered his father before him. I have no proof of this beyond the word of Mr. Kirk and several of his compatriots and—” A gut feeling.  
  
“Those are not facts,” Sarek said.  
  
“Regardless,” Spock said.  
  
He might have said more if not for the sudden uproar at the door of the dining area. The waiter was standing with his hands in the air but there were no weapons drawn. The diners gasped and chattered and pointed at the two criminals standing there. Spock assumed that neither Pup nor McCoy had any clear idea what they looked like. McCoy was streaked with blood from his hair to his knees and he had the air of a man driven made by circumstance. Pup was twitching his hands against the guns at his side and talking fast about apologies and how it couldn’t wait—they really had to—  
  
Spock stood. “I believe you mean to speak to me.”  
  
“Speak is a word for it,” McCoy agreed.   
  
By mutual, silent, agreement they excused themselves. Spock did not mean for his parents to follow him but they came behind him regardless. McCoy waited until they were in the street where the ears were larger but the light was dimmer.   
  
“You have to let him go,” McCoy said.  
  
“He didn’t do it,” Pup said, “Captain would never do anything like that—he’d never hurt a fly that didn’t deserve it.”  
  
“Think about it, man,” McCoy said, “in all the years he’s been robbing stages has anyone ever been hurt? I mean—intentionally hurt? Nothing like this happened before—it’s got to be that rat bastard up in Narada.”   
  
“Were you not taken against your will?” Spock asked.  
  
“That was different,” Pup shouted. They were walking toward the jail without thinking about it.  
  
“You were kidnapped?” Amanda gasped. She gaped at the state of his clothes.  
  
“Mother,” Spock said, “please return to the hotel. It is not safe for you to be—”  
  
“You’re here,” she said. As if that settled the matter. Sarek did not immediately tell her to return and therefore she took it as permission to continue. That was foolish but there were more important matters at hand.  
  
“I wasn’t kidnapped,” McCoy countered, “my services were requested and I obliged. I’m a doctor—it’s what I do.”  
  
“Yeah,” Pup agreed. He attempted to get close enough to lift the keys from Spock’s pockets and seemed to be thwarted by the presence of so many bodies in close proximity. “It was Nero—he sent his men to do it. They were waiting for us, they had guns.”  
  
Yes, the engine of the train had been full of holes.   
  
“Might I remind you that several survivors of the massacre name Dr. McCoy as their attacker? Apparently, you were the only member of Captain’s party that fired upon the men.” Spock stopped in the street just beyond the office. From that distance he could see Olson slouching in his chair, head back and arms across his shirt. The lamp burned overhead and cast an orange glow across his red shirt.  
  
“That’s because they were trying to kill two innocent men. Damn it, Spock,” McCoy grabbed him by the shirt front and pulled them closer, “nobody’s that inhuman. You know he’s innocent, you said it yourself, are you really willing to become a murderer?”  
  
In the space between them where there was only enough air to hear two voices he said: “I have given you ample opportunity to mount a rescue. You have proven inefficient and incapable of completing one.” Then he pushed the doctor back and straightened his clothes, frowned distastefully at the brown smears on his shirt.  
  
“Is he innocent?” Amanda asked at his elbow.  
  
Sarek was frowning. It would not set well with his simple system of right and wrong. The law was right. Politics were right. Questions and immorality were wrong.  
  
“Spock,” Amanda said as she touched his arm. (There were smears on his shirt.) “You cannot hang an innocent man.”   
  
“Deputy Olson’s shirt is red,” Spock said.  
  
“So?” Pup asked.  
  
“He was not wearing a red shirt today,” Spock finished. Then he stepped away from the two staring men and walked toward the Marshal’s office. They were all following him—down the street—he felt his footsteps getting faster with every beat of his heart and he knew long before he took two steps up onto the porch as one. He knew before his hand touched the blood-wet shirt of the dead deputy. He knew before Olson’s body slumped to the side and Spock jerked around to push open the door.  
  
He knew before the stink of fuse burning and Kirk’s shout of: “Get the hell out of here Spock!”  
  
“Back!” he echoed.  
  
It was just too late.  
  
\--  
  
Kirk was testing the steadfastness of the bars when the door opened. He figured, really, Spock would understand his motivation and his attempts so he didn’t look up. The uncomfortable board could be pulled off the wall if he applied enough pressure but the bars weren’t going to move without a good deal more dynamite than he had in his pocket.  
  
“Turn,” was not Spock’s voice or the voice of anyone that he knew from around here.  
  
Kirk turned on the balls of his feet from where he was crouching and looked up. There was some planned comeback, something along the lines of not being a dog that was swallowed with his breath and the smug smile he intended to offer. There was nothing to say to the man with the black hat and the black gloves folded over the silver ball of his cane.  
  
“You look like your father,” Nero said, “on your knees in front of me about to die.”  
  
There was no sense in throwing himself against the bars, there was no dignity in pushing his arms through them, hands outstretched, trying like hell just to scratch the man, just to get a fingertip or a fingernail or anything at all on him. “Bastard!” he shouted.  
  
“My parents were happily married,” Nero said. Then a pause while he smiled at Kirk’s futile attempts and kept smiling until Kirk dropped his arms again, caught the bars in his fists and could do nothing but watch the two black-coated men lighting the long fuse leading to a wooden box. “I will admit that you have been a greater annoyance to me than your father. Had his name not been brought up in conversation today, I don’t believe I would have remembered it.”  
  
Kirk gritted his teeth.  
  
“How is your mother?” Nero asked.  
  
He wanted to scream: I’ll kill you. I’ll find a way to stop you. You’ll pay for this. I hate you. He wanted to have anything to say beyond the grind of his teeth that made his jaw ache as the men straightened and left so that all there was in the room was Kirk, the bars, Nero and the bomb. “You better pray I die,” Kirk said.  
  
“I discovered,” Nero said, “that the former Marshal, Mr. Pike, is not as dead as I had been lead to believe. Imagine my fascination to find that he apparently has a ranch somewhere to the south of Enterprise. Naturally, I sent out several men to scout the area. I expect one of them will be returning soon.”   
  
“Pray,” Kirk said.  
  
Nero only smiled and tipped his hat before he turned and left. His man, the one that had stood at his left stepped up and spit on Kirk. His grin was as cruel if not as satisfied with itself. They left and the door swung shut.   
  
Kirk turned back to yank at the cot, hands around the edge of the wood against the wall, yanking and yanking while the chain and nails holding in place squealed and cracked. He felt every bead of sweat down his face and the heat of an imaginary fire at his back. Again and again until he was kicking it to knock it those last precious few centimeters free.   
  
It wasn’t going to do much—maybe just enough that he lived—he ducked against the wall, pulled it over him and—  
  
The door opened.  
  
Spock was there.  
  
“Get the hell out of here, Spock!” he shouted.  
  
Too late. That was all. It was just too late.  
  
\--  
  
The first moments after were still a blur. The ringing sound of splintering wood was another dull echo. McCoy didn’t think he could have any more bruises than he already had. He remembered tumbling, remembered rolling back over onto his side, remembered the flaming bits of the building and the yawning shudder as what was left of the building started to collapse.  
  
Spock was a crumpled body to his left and there was that woman he’d been talking to on the right. She was bleeding, her dress was on fire and she wasn’t moving—Bones coughed as he rolled onto his knees. Everything was slow motion even as he tried to move fast. He remembered pulling his coat off, remembered smothering the flames. He remembered rolling her onto her back, remembered ducking his head down to feel her breath against his cheek.  
  
Pup screamed something as he ran into the building. The tall man that looked like Spock was pushing splintered wood off his back as he got to his feet, walking sideways steps across to where McCoy was ripping the woman’s sleeve down to show her bleeding arm.  
  
The man didn’t speak as he crouched, as he slid his arms under her, as he pulled her up—didn’t speak when her head fell back and she hung limp in his arms.   
  
“She’s still alive,” Bones remembered saying then.  
  
“Help!” Pup screamed. “Help!” He had two hands wrapped around Kirk’s arm, dragging him across the dirt, trying to get him out of the wreckage. Bones wanted to help him, thought about moving but there were more men running now. They swarmed from everywhere, all at once.  
  
Someone drew the first gun and men in black clothes with black marks on their face were everywhere. The new law looked a lot like no law.   
  
Bones thought he saw Sulu but he knew he stumbled to his own feet. “Bring her.” He crossed to Spock, caught him by the blue vest and pulled him up. Every muscle in his body quivered with exhaustion—over used and abused—he got the man over his shoulder anyway and pointed away.   
  
Away from this.  
  
Sulu was behind him with Pup caught in his arms, hand across the kid’s mouth and Captain was back in the swarm of black-coats.   
  
It could have been hours later when the mania died. McCoy had scrubbed the woman’s wounds clean and sedated her to keep her unconscious while he sutured the lacerations and wrapped the burns. Her face was bruised and swollen—her right leg was burned from the ankle to the knee in patches but she was alive.  
  
“Thank you,” the man that must have been Spock’s father said.  
  
Sulu hid in the back room with Pup and Scotty while they talked quietly about _what they meant to do_. The streets were filled with the calls of black-coats demanded every one remain inside.   
  
Inside.  
  
“I heard them talking,” Sulu whispered. “They know about Pike. They know about Winona.”  
  
“Captain was still alive,” Pup repeated.  
  
McCoy left them, walked past the man holding his wife’s hand in the surgery and slapped both his hands against Spock’s chest to shove him back. It wasn’t fair to the man. It wasn’t fair to anyone—Spock pushed back if only to stay, to see his mother. This man hadn’t watched his family die yet—maybe that was the difference maybe that was what it took, maybe now Spock would _see_.  
  
“What now?” he demanded.  
  
“I am uncertain of what you are ref—”  
  
McCoy shoved him again and Spock moved too easily. Was pushed too easily. The great, impervious, untouchable, black-eyed, inhuman devil of a Marshal was nothing but a used ragdoll now. “Bullshit,” McCoy said, “ _bullshit_.”  
  
“Physical violence will not—”  
  
McCoy pushed him again. “He almost killed your mother. He killed those women on that train. You know it. You _knew_ it.”   
  
“I had no conclusive evid—”  
  
No, not that. Spock was looking at him like he was so close to cracking open and what a sight it was going to be when that composure broke and there was nothing holding his real emotion in. Flight or fight was the shivering hate of a boy in a forest and two baby sisters at his back. Every man had to choose. “You _knew_ ,” McCoy repeated. “You _knew_ and you followed your precious law and now you’re mother is half dead, your town is overrun with Nero’s men and Kirk’s family is _dead_ as soon as that bastard gets to them! We’re all dead and—”  
  
“You are exaggerating the situation.”  
  
McCoy hit him. There was no reason to do it, to hit him or to grab him. There was no reason for Spock to hit him back. It wasn’t going to solve anything but it broke open in a fury of steps and shoves until they were unruly boys rolling on the floor landing elbows and fists where they could. Spock pinned him first—he had the advantage of height and weight and energy. McCoy didn’t give, only kept fighting, pinned to the ground with Spock stretched across his back.  
  
“Nero intends to attack Kirk’s family?” Spock said.  
  
“Spock,” interrupted them.  
  
Spock let him go, pushed himself away—to his feet—to fix his shirt and vest and hair until he was pristine and perfect save for the streaks and marks where McCoy had rubbed off on him.  
  
“Yes,” McCoy said.  
  
The others were in the doorway, each of them with a graver face than the other. Spock looked at them. He looked at his father. Nothing was said between them but the tall man nodded once and went back through the door to the surgery and shut it behind him.   
  
“You are certain Kirk was alive?” Spock said to Pup.  
  
“Very certain.”  
  
Spock nodded once. “I assume you have horses?”  
  
“Yes,” Scotty said.  
  
Sulu said nothing, only stared at him. McCoy pushed himself up to his feet again and wiped his hands against his shirt. “We don’t have guns.”  
  
“I have a small armory,” Spock said. “I am leaving you and Mr. Chekov to locate and free Mr. Kirk. There are only a few places they would have taken him assuming they did not immediately execute him. There is a second cell under the courthouse that I would recommend investigating first. Mr—”  
  
“Scotty,” Scotty said, “and Sulu.”  
  
“Accompany me.”  
  
“To the ranch?” Scotty asked.  
  
Spock nodded and then headed toward the door. Scotty followed after him immediately while Sulu went slower, took the time to look at McCoy and didn’t smile, didn’t offer more than a glare and a strange: “Good fuck,” which meant nothing really.  
  
Pup laughed nervously. “You’re kind of crazy, doc.”  
  
\--  
  
It was necessary to move as inconspicuously as possible. This required moving slowly and pausing to avoid detection. The man, Sulu, seemed to have a preternatural sense for when they were close to being discovered and Spock was content to allow him to lead. He directed them to the boarding house, through the door at the back, down the hall and into the room he had long ago secured for himself.  
  
“This doesn’t look like an armory,” Scotty—as he called himself—said.   
  
“If it were to appear as one it would invite criminal activity,” Spock said. He pushed the bed to the far side of the room and crouched to train his finger along the edge of a board until he found the bit of string that would allow him to pull the first loose board up. “Given the instability of the social climate in the territories, it was offered as advice to me to have a reserve of weapons.”  
  
“For when everything went to shit?” Scotty asked.  
  
“For situations such as this, yes,” Spock agreed. He loosened the other boards and leaned down to pull the three rifles, two shot guns and several revolvers out of the hidden space. He set them on the floor and reached in again for the satchel of bullets. “We are quite outnumbered even with these weapons.”  
  
“We’ve had worse odds,” Scotty said.  
  
“We also had Captain,” Sulu remarked.  
  
Spock set the boards right. “Does one man make such a difference?”  
  
Sulu didn’t laugh but Scotty chuckled.  
  
“The right man does,” Sulu said. “I want one of the rifles and the revolver.”  
  
“We’ll give the good doc one of the shotguns—I think he likes them.” Scotty picked a revolver for himself and Spock handed them the bullets for their weapons.   
  
Spock picked up the remaining rifle and one of the shotguns. Sulu took the other and the remaining revolvers were packed in the satchel. “Gentleman,” Spock said. “For, at least, the appearance of legality, I would like to formally deputize you.”  
  
They looked appalled.   
  
“Consider it done,” Spock said. He pointed them toward the door and they moved. It was another slow trip through the streets to where the horses were waiting for them. He swung up onto his while Sulu helped Scotty onto his own animal before mounting his own. “The most direct route.”  
  
“It’s a dirty ride,” Sulu offered as a warning.  
  
“I assure you I am capable.”   
  
Then they were off.


	5. Chapter 5

First, Kirk tested his hands. His knuckles were a little bloody but his bones were intact. Then his arms and there was the twinge of something that hurt a bit but it didn’t bleed and it wasn’t broken. A rib might have been bruised or broke but it wasn’t worth dying over. His feet moved, his knees bent and he figured that all in all, he was going to be ok.  
  
Kirk rolled onto his belly and lifted his head and found a single disinterested man staring back at him through the bars. The man had a gun in his lap. “Are you supposed to kill me as soon as I wake up?”  
  
“I am to kill you should you attempt to escape. I left the door open for you.”   
  
Of course he did. Kirk sat up, back against the damp earthen wall and looked at the man more closely. “You spit on me.”  
  
The man only shrugged. It was nothing of note if he did spit on Kirk. He sat easily in his chair with the front legs off the ground and picked up a strip of meat to push into his mouth and chew. He smacked on it, the corner of his mouth twisting up into a smirk as he stroked the handle of the gun and waited.  
  
“Where’s Nero?”  
  
The man shrugged.  
  
Kirk leaned over to get his hand on the bar and pulled on it like he was testing its strength. There was definitely something unpleasant about his shoulder. Maybe a muscle injury. He couldn’t be sure—he staggered to his feet and pulled himself over one bar at a time. Every limp made the man’s grin a little broader.   
  
“This won’t even be fun if you don’t try harder.”  
  
Right, he pulled at the door of the cell and it swung inward, he crawled down it one hand over the other to the edge. The man picked up another strip of meat. Kirk took a step and let his right leg give out from under him. He fell hard on his better side (forgot the bruised rib, really) and watched the man set the chair back on all four legs as he stood.   
  
“I had hoped for a better fight,” the man said. He caught Kirk by the shirt and pulled until he was up to his feet then caught him by the neck and shoved him back against the bars. His gun was loose in his free hand because the man was high on the arrogance of a sure advantage.  
  
Kirk had taught Chekov how to play men at cards but the same principle worked for just about anything. A cheat might have known what a fake weakness was but his bastard with his hand squeezing Kirk’s throat as he wheezed some dirty sentiment of superiority—he didn’t have a clue. Kirk let his eyes roll back, felt his lashes fluttering as he reached out blind and grabbed the gun: One hard jerk and six seconds to turn the gun so the barrel was pressed under the bastard’s chin.   
  
“I got your gun,” he said and pulled the trigger.   
  
He fell forward when the body slumped back and barely caught himself on his fingertips, wiping at the blood spatter on his face, stepping past the body’s legs and then back against the bars at the rush of footsteps on the wooden steps.  
  
“Whoa!” Bones shouted when Kirk shoved the gun in his face. Pup was behind him, arms up and keys dangling off his thumb.  
  
“We’re here to save you,” Pup said.  
  
Oh. Good. “Nero’s going after my Mom,” Kirk said.  
  
“We know,” Pup said.  
  
“Sulu and Scotty are already on their way there with Spock. We’ve got the horses up here—” Bones might have been meaning to say something else but Kirk caught him by the neck and kissed him. Just once, a hard kiss that could have been the last.   
  
“Spock?” he repeated as they ran up the steps.  
  
“McCoy fucked him,” Pup called back. They were hush-hush-tip-toeing when they got up to the dark evening air.   
  
“Really?” Kirk asked.  
  
“I did not,” McCoy hissed back as he swung up onto the nearest horse and pointed to Kirk’s waiting for him. “I didn’t do anything at all like that.”  
  
“You fucked him,” Pup repeated. He took off first and Bones followed after him leaving Kirk to curse under his breath at the jarring pain in his ribs as he spurred his horse into a gallop. It wouldn’t be so bad once it stopped hurting like hell.  
  
“Doc,” he called when they were past the edge of town and out into the open air, “if we live—remind me to explain good fuck-bad fuck.” Then he had no breath at all because it all went to holding in the shout of pain until it went to holding his breath at every second that passed and the minutes that died and the dread in his gut that wouldn’t leave.  
  
\--  
  
There was already fire and gunfire when they got there. McCoy pulled his horse to a stop and wondered exactly how smart of a man he was to ride into a gunfight unarmed. Somewhere in his brain he realized it wasn’t even the first time he’d done it and that wasn’t much of a comfort at all. Kirk hopped off his horse and landed with a tight squeeze of a curse as he clutched his ribs and limped forward. Pup held onto the reins of his horse and stared with big round eyes.  
  
“How are we going to figure out where our side is?” McCoy whispered.   
  
“That’s easy Bones,” Kirk said, “ours are the ones not shooting at us.”  
  
Sarcasm was comforting.  
  
\--  
  
Nero’s men were already at the ranch when they arrived. Sulu had dismounted roughly and pulled his gun in an instant. Spock rode his horse into a small group of them that were getting close to a broken glass window in the front of the family home. The barn appeared to be on fire and the wind blew sparks across the roof of the house.  
  
“Oh shit,” Scotty shouted. “Sulu!”  
  
“I know!” Sulu shouted back.  
  
“What?” Spock asked. He drew his revolver and shot the man who was taking aim at his head before he dismounted his horse. The door to the house opened at the sound of Sulu’s shouting and the three of them were urged inside.  
  
“There’s explosives in the barn,” Scotty said when they were inside.   
  
Uhura was pushing a china cabinet against the door. Spock pushed it with her and she stared at him. “You.”  
  
“I assure you I have come to have a greater appreciation for your beliefs,” he said.  
  
“Where’s Jim?” was another woman’s voice. There was a slant of light through the broken glass window that fell at an angle across a woman with her back against the wall and a rifle clutched in her hands.   
  
“He’s on the way,” Scotty answered.  
  
“If you’re lying to me, so help me God,” the woman called back as she stood again and looked out the window through the corner of her eye. The end of the threat never came—she took aim and shot and the recoil hit her shoulder hard enough to knock her a step back.   
  
“Gun,” Uhura said, “Rifle,” she amended.  
  
Spock handed her the rifle and its sack of powder and bullets. He was left with a shotgun and a matter of pistols. Scotty and Sulu ducked behind the cabinet with him. “There are three windows,” Sulu said.  
  
“There are as many as fifteen men in the yard,” Spock said.  
  
“How do you know?” Scotty asked.  
  
“I counted,” Spock said.  
  
They did not outwardly doubt him but they did not entirely believe him either. Bullets were tearing through the thin siding of the house now. Mama—Mrs. Kirk, surely, ducked behind a metal plate that had been mounted at the corner.   
  
“Pike,” Sulu said as if he only just remembered.  
  
“Aye,” Scotty said.  
  
\--  
  
Kirk whistled. He listened hard over the exchange of bullets until he heard the shrill sound of an answering call. Pup whooped a nearly silent shout of victory as Kirk motioned them forward, him in front, Pup in the rear and Bones ducked between them.   
  
It was a mad dash of a run to the back door—the barn was caving in now, cracking and sparking off one short explosion after another. The light was enough to see the fall of bodies at the back of the house. There were three dead men staring glassy-eyed at the sky.   
  
“Get their guns,” Kirk hissed.   
  
Bones tucked them under his arms as Pup stared back and forth waiting for another man to jump out of the darkness. The gunfire was coming from the front of the house now—Kirk pushed open the back door and ran face first into the Marshal himself.  
  
“I am pleased to see you are not as dead as Nero appears to believe you are,” Spock said.  
  
“Honey, I love you too,” Kirk blurted and didn’t think too hard about what he’d said.   
  
“Damn good fuck,” Pup repeated and smacked Bones on the back.  
  
“I didn’t fuck him,” Bones bothered to protest again. He dumped the guns on the side table in the kitchen and picked his choice from them. Spock pulled a coach gun off his shoulder and thrust it at Bones.  
  
“Scotty assured me you would appreciate this,” he said.  
  
“Where’s my mother?” Kirk asked.  
  
Spock held up a finger, cocked his head to one side and then crossed the floor to the window, aimed his rifle from a corner and took a shot. It hit true with a gushing thud and a gasp of breath before the body fell. Spock returned. “You are all my deputies,” he stated.  
  
“I’m a doctor,” Bones objected.  
  
“Your mother is in the front of the house.”  
  
\--  
  
They were all idiots crouching behind bits of furniture not yet torn to shreds by the never ending volley of bullets. The only one smart enough to take any real cover was Mama Winnie in the corner, ducked low with her rifle and even that sheet of metal they’d slapped on the wall wasn’t going to hold against very many more.   
  
“Jimmy,” she whispered.  
  
“He’s out there,” Kirk answered.  
  
Mama Winnie nodded once.   
  
Kirk crawled across the floor and crouched next to his mother, leaning forward toward the window and raising up just enough to peek through the square. Something exploded in the barn that made the house shake and Scotty muttered a _sorry_ while Uhura sighed and Sulu looked out through one of the holes in the siding of the house.   
  
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Spock’s taking them out one by one in the back,” Kirk whispered. He ducked out of the way, grabbed his mother with both arms and covered her body with his when the next volley of bullets shot through the window. “Alright,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “I’ve got a plan.”  
  
\--  
  
The plan, as it was explained to Spock, was not much of a plan at all. Scotty and Sulu took the women out through the back door toward the edge of the property beyond the burning barn. They would send them off on their horses and return to assist the others. It was only a diversion, of course. Kirk would not allow his men to put themselves into the danger he intended to put himself in.  
  
Pup would take up the post of protecting the back window where the barely responsive man sat with his head hanging forward and drool on his chin. Kirk stopped by the man and touched his hand and then returned to the front room. There were only three of them now. The doctor had a shotgun and a revolver. Kirk had one gun under his right hand and Spock had two rifles, both loaded.   
  
The plan was as much as suicide. That much was certain.  
  
Kirk’s hands did not shake as he pulled the cabinet away from the door. The doctor caught him by the sleeve and cursed at him before he kissed him. Spock felt awkward standing close enough to hear the wet slush of their tongues rubbing. Kirk smiled at the doctor before looking at him and seemed to shrug to himself before he kissed Spock.  
  
“What are you doing?” Spock asked when it was over and the damp impression of lips was still hot over his.  
  
“It’s a kiss,” McCoy explained.  
  
“Another life, another time, you and me,” Kirk said to him, “and you,” he said to the doctor, “we could have been something great.” Then he drew in a breath. “Ready?”  
  
“Not hardly,” McCoy said.  
  
\--  
  
Some fucking plan it was. Some brilliant fucking plan. Spock crossed to the metal plate in the corner, peeking at an angle through the ruined window. He had his two rifles and a revolver in his gun belt. There were bullets on the floor next to him—he could reload if he were fast enough but he was on his own.   
  
“There appear to be eight of them,” Spock said.  
  
Kirk was taking in a deep breath while he pressed himself in a sliver against the wall. That just left McCoy to crouch in the corner and keep his peace until he was needed. Needed—that was a funny word. There was no way in hell to go out there without getting themselves killed.   
  
“Nero!” Kirk shouted.  
  
Spock looked over toward them. Kirk wasn’t looking at Bones when he looked up from where he was crouching. Spock saw, Spock seemed to know exactly how fucked they were so when McCoy lifted his finger to his lips to indicate silence and shifted on his feet to creep out of the room, Spock nodded.  
  
“You yellow-bellied Yankee bastard!” Kirk added on.  
  
Pup was in the back, looking caught between apprehension and boredom as he stared out the window at the orange glow of the fire. “Where are you going?” he hissed.  
  
“I’m getting a better angle,” McCoy said.  
  
Better angle? Closer angle. He stood up straight and picked up as many guns as he could stash and opened the door. Pup was perking up at the window, staring out at him after the door was closed and McCoy was on his own in the heat of the yard. He found a body that looked almost the same size of him and tugged at their long black coat, the black vest and didn’t waste time being picky about bullet holes and blood stains.  
  
Through the blistering heat and the sound of the fire eating, he thought he could still hear Kirk shouting.   
  
The door opened again, Pup was there without his rifle. “I will be your hostage.”  
  
This idea was no better. “Is this a good fuck or a bad one?” McCoy asked.  
  
Pup only shrugged. “Too early to tell, I think.”  
  
\--  
  
“Kirk?” Nero shouted back. The guns were silent on the other side of the ruined wall. The shock was evident in his voice; the smug superiority was lost somewhere in the timbre of his voice. His men were whispering nothing but their silence was loud and abrasive.  
  
Spock whispered from across the room. “He is to the left of the door; there are three men between you and him. If you are fortunate, I will be able to reduce that number to one relatively quickly. That will leave a remaining five.”  
  
“I’ve had worse odds,” Kirk whispered back. Then he turned his face toward the wood to shout. “Did you pray, Nero?”  
  
“I bless God before every meal and every sure victory!” Nero shouted back.  
  
Kirk took in a breath and turned his head to look behind him where Bones was—not. “Where’d Bones’ go?” he asked.   
  
Spock said nothing. He was taking aim through the window, silently offering nothing but the reassurance that he would do his part. Kirk pulled the china cabinet away from the door, opened it just enough to see out a sliver and looked at the half circle of men all reloading their guns. If he was going to do this he needed to do it now. So he pulled in a breath and—  
  
“Let me go!” Pup screamed. He was thrashing around as one of those bastard black coats held him in a fist. “Let me go, you pig!” He twisted and fought and was shoved down on the ground and kicked for his trouble. The black coat pulled a gun and pointed it at him, arm straight and unwavering. It was too dark to see his face but there was something familiar about the wild tangle of his hair. “Heartless bastard!”  
  
“Please,” Nero said, “shut him up. Kirk! Are you watching?”  
  
Kirk shoved open the door without thinking. “Let him go,” he said.  
  
The black coat pointing a gun at Chekov only tilted his head to the side like he didn’t understand the order. His left arm twitched slightly, like he was shaking his sleeve and Pup shouted curses in Russian as he stared up at his executioner with defiance.   
  
“Nero,” Kirk shouted. There were guns pointed at him from every angle. “You want me—let him go.”  
  
\--  
  
Spock did not hold his breath. Rather he watched the twitch of McCoy’s left arm until he was certain whatever weapon he had concealed up his sleeve was low enough the man could get his hand around it in an instant. He watched Chekov on the ground with his elbows in the dirt and took note of the gun in his holster and the odd angle of his right arm where it dipped behind his back.   
  
He watched Kirk stand in the center of them shouting in ignorance of his crew’s genius while every man in the circle took aim at him.   
  
Nero was waiting as well. Someone would surely take a shot.   
  
Spock could not shake the urge to shoot the man where he stood. It was not his right to do so. The criminal deserved execution but Kirk, perhaps, deserved to be the man that provided it. So he took aim at the faceless black coat past Kirk that was sweating more than the others, licking his lips nervously as his hand twitched around the handle of his gun.   
  
When he was certain that they were as prepared as they could be for a losing fight he whispered a small prayer as his mother taught him when he was a child and squeezed the trigger. The shot rang loud in the stilled chaos of the moment—the condemned man jerked and then fell back, his gun discharged into the sky.   
  
Sound burst then, a half a dozen guns going off all at once, smoke from the guns and the barn and another explosion. Kirk had thrown himself forward, against Nero and knocked them both to the ground. Spock lifted the second rifle, took a quick assessment of the scene and shot a tall man that was striding forward to take aim at Kirk.  
  
He dropped the rifle and ran to the door.  
  
\--  
  
McCoy counted himself lucky. Nero’s men didn’t shoot him instantly. Kirk didn’t shoot him when he ran out through the front door with the mistaken idea that this hostage situation was real. Nobody shot Kirk on sight.  
  
All in all, right before he got his palm around the handle of the revolver that he’d slid up his sleeve, things were going pretty well. Pup was staring at him solidly; mock fear nothing at all to the real determination in his eyes. This wasn’t some fun game when your life was on the line. McCoy thought it was a good thing for the kid, if he lived, to grow up a little. Maybe he’d be less obnoxious that way. (Then again, this was the last damn way anyone should be asked to grow up.)   
  
The first shot rang out. Spock. The first man fell.  
  
Pup moved fast, both guns in his hands, flat on his back, arms out and shooting before McCoy could get his arms up. Nobody was expecting it from him—they were caught between shooting at Kirk throwing himself at Nero and shooting at Chekov on the ground. Bullets were flying everywhere again, he stepped back, pointing to the right and adding a second bullet to the first one that went too far to the side when Chekov missed. To the left it was the side of a man’s head close enough he could see the scars on his chin.  
  
\--  
  
Kirk didn’t think, didn’t feel the blistering pain of Nero beating on his ribs—didn’t feel _pain_ , he felt the inhuman fucker twisting under him, the kick of his legs, the hard thud of his fists against Nero’s face. It was blind fury—there was nothing beyond the inhale-exhale of his breath. Blood—Nero’s blood spilling out of his nose, his mouth, on his chin and Kirk’s hands.  
  
It drove him a little crazy.  
  
He didn’t see the butt of the shotgun before it smashed against his face.  
  
\--  
  
There were too many of them. It was difficult to be sure which were the enemy and which were not. Peripherally, Spock was aware that Chekov was still on the ground and that McCoy had exchanged his pistol for a shotgun. It was an illogical decision when that gun would not yield as many shots—there was no time to weigh the merits of the man’s decision.  
  
“Stop!” was the shrill scream that cut through the bullets.   
  
Spock was not certain why he obeyed; only that he found himself holding a gun aimed at one of the last standing black coats. There were maybe four—one was still alive as he clutched his arm on the ground. A living man was a threat; an injured man was more of one. Then there was Nero, heaving for breath as he wiped his sleeve across his bloody face and pointed a gun at Kirk on the ground.  
  
Kirk was on his back, one hand across his face.  
  
There was a second black coat with a shotgun pointed at him.   
  
“Drop your weapons or I’ll kill him,” Nero said.  
  
“That would be illogical,” Spock stated, “as you intend to kill him regardless.” It was only cold logic, something his father would have been proud of. It moved through Spock with the feeling of too hot blood and it made his head spin as he turned from looking at Nero to looking at the man he had intended to kill before the interruption. He squeezed the trigger, he watched the man’s skin burst open in his throat, the blood flowed as the body slumped.  
  
“Damn it, Spock,” McCoy was shouting.  
  
\--  
  
It was going to end like this: Nero’s eyes wide and gleaming orange. Spock lowering his arm to his side, head tilting ever so slightly to the side like challenging a crazy man. Pup half rolled onto his belly and gaping at the scene in full realization that this was _it_.  
  
McCoy felt a strange sense of calm about the whole thing. There was no sense in getting upset now; they all knew when they road into this thing that it was going to end just like this. So he pulled the hammer back on the shotgun and cocked up an eyebrow.   
  
The shrill shriek broke the moment, the galloping horse caught everyone’s attention. The body flying off the horse caught the man with the shotgun pointed at Kirk by surprise and he hit the ground. Sulu. Yes—with a sword instead of a gun but death was death and—  
  
A gun fired and Kirk screamed.  
  
McCoy turned to the side and shot the bastard aiming at Pup. There he was, all out of ammo and there was Kirk crawling up to his feet again but that hardly mattered because Spock had gone ten feet in six seconds. Nero turned his gun to him, the smoking barrel of it all but pressed against Spock’s face.  
  
“I’ll kill them all,” Nero said coldly.  
  
“No!” Pup screamed in counterpoint. He was crawling across the dirt, pulling at Sulu’s slumped forward body, shaking as he said _no_ again and then again. Bones dropped the gun and moved to run forward.  
  
The last black coat stopped him. Cruel-grinned bastard with a still-loaded weapon.  
  
“Everyone you love,” Nero added.  
  
\--  
  
At first, Kirk thought he must have been dead. The spray of blood was so hot on his face. It must have been his.  
  
Then, he thought that Spock must have been dead. Dead like his father, like those women, like Sulu, like—  
  
When he opened his eyes he saw his mother and it made no sense at all. She was standing over a fallen body, revolver in her hand and something ugly and twisted across her face. Hate. That was what it must look like, what she never showed— Years of it, all at once as she squeezed the trigger again and again and tears were on her face with drops of blood that weren’t hers and Nero’s body jumped with every shot.  
  
Kirk moved then, over the body, caught her by the shoulders as the gun clicked—empty and she kept pulling the trigger—he wrapped his arms around her. She shook and then she broke and sobbed and he held her.  
  
\--  
  
Dawn broke across the massacre.   
  
The barn smoldered and smoked.  
  
Spock looked at the broken faces of the dead men one after the other. There were several among their number that had been witnesses to the train massacre. He felt that their fate was, perhaps more than the others, well deserved. The ground was wet as he stepped passed them.  
  
There was a fence at the edge of the property with a line of horses tethered in place. They were magnificent animals, every one of them. He had attempted to put some consideration into what they should do with them. It would be both most and least appropriate to return them to Nero’s estate. As they were rightfully his property there was no reason to do anything but. However, given the circumstances, it could be considered an antagonistic move.  
  
Spock stopped some distance from where Kirk stood looking back at his ruined home and the dead. He had not washed nor slept in the hours since the gunfire stopped. Rather, he had attended to his mother until she consented to be consoled by Uhura. The man, Pike, had been removed from the house when the roof caught fire.   
  
“Dr. McCoy assures me Sulu will recover. His injury was mostly superficial.”   
  
After Nero had been dispatched, the last standing black coat had made some attempt to kill the doctor and had been shot by Scotty. The injured black coat had attempted to run and Uhura had shot him while he fled. Chekov had shouted with joy when he discovered his friend to be alive. McCoy had begun treating wounds.  
  
Kirk nodded here and now. Under the filth and the heavy exhaustion, he looked as if he were waking up again. “So what happens now?” he asked.  
  
Spock did not have an answer to that question. He turned so he could see what Kirk saw: The half-burnt house, the bodies, the group of survivors huddling together to share the strange companionship that came with horror. McCoy was walking over, still wearing the black vest he had taken from a dead man.  
  
“I believe,” Spock said, “burning would be most efficient. Moving the bodies into what remains of your house would be simplest—unless you wish to save what remains.”  
  
McCoy stopped a short distance away, looking more like the nervous, uncertain doctor that hated public executions than the madman that had he had been in the darkness of the night.   
  
“Burn it all,” Kirk whispered.   
  
“We lived,” McCoy said. The statement seemed to have some significance between the two of them. Kirk tipped his head to one side and smiled at the corner of his bruised mouth. “The rest can’t decide if last night was a good fuck or a bad one.”  
  
Kirk squinted at the thought. “You pretending to be one of Nero’s bastard men?” McCoy nodded. “Good fuck,” Kirk said, “I think.”  
  
“Fuck?” Spock prompted.  
  
Kirk might have meant to laugh but the sound was only a wheeze. “I’ll explain it later.”  
  
\--  
  
It took them all, Scotty, Pup, Spock, Kirk, Uhura, Winona and him to move the bodies into the house. It was a matter of kerosene and matches and good luck to light the building on fire. They had a small pile of belongings that had been rescued from the wreckage. Winona had a mirror she insisted be saved and she held it clutched against her waist while she worried about the chickens and the still standing fence as they loaded the old wagon that had been kept away from the barn.  
  
They hitched it to a horse, made sure Pike was comfortable amid the odds and ends.  
  
Spock decided to bring Nero’s horses back to town with them and that was just as well considering their own had gone missing. The ride back was slow by necessity. Kirk had broken ribs and a bruised head, Scotty was sweating with pain and exhaustion, Sulu was still bleeding when he was jostled too much and McCoy was just tired.  
  
It might have taken them hours to get back to town.   
  
“What about the rest of Nero’s men?” Pup asked when they were close.  
  
Nobody had an answer for him. They walked their horses up Main Street toward McCoy’s doctor office and the hotel. The hotel and the nice hot baths—God he was filthy and he didn’t even care. There were people on the street, people that stared, people that talked, but none of them wore black coats with black marks across their faces.   
  
“Where are they?” Pup asked.  
  
“I imagine,” Spock said as he lifted up and then dismounted his horse, “they either left of their own volition or they were…encouraged.” He threw the reins over the bar outside the doctor’s office and went to assist Winona down from her horse.  
  
McCoy dragged himself inside the building and found Spock’s mother—Amanda—sitting up on the bed where he left her. In pain but otherwise healthy. She told them what happened.  
  
Sarek had been there when she woke and after being assured that she was not going to pass, he had excused himself. When he returned he assured her that the threat remaining in the town was dealt with.   
  
Great really.  
  
The way Spock knelt next to her to be hugged and kissed and coddled was nice in its own way too. Bones was dreaming of hot baths and large beds. He yawned suddenly and expansively and was too fucking tired to be ashamed.  
  
“Oh,” Amanda whispered as if she were just now aware of them all, “Spock, dear, the hotel should have rooms for your friends. You can tell them your father will pay for it.”  
  
Nice woman. They dragged themselves to the hotel. The fancy-dressed men in the dining hall stared with wide open eyes and black curiosity. Kirk leaned against McCoy, half asleep and barely standing until they were shown to their room. Everyone paired up. Pup, Sulu and Scotty. Winona, Uhura and Pike. Spock, Kirk and him.   
  
The bathes were in the building behind the hotel, the water was almost blistering hot.  
  
\--  
  
Kirk woke up to too many bodies. That wasn’t so strange, really. He woke up in dog piles more often than not. Cold nights on long stretches of grass led to piles of boys all sleeping together. Scotty always made comments about it. Pup always snuggled the hardest. Sulu always tried to act like he didn’t love it.  
  
These bodies, though, they weren’t easily familiar to him. The one behind him was too lean, breathing too soft and the one in front of him was too broad and smelled like soap bubbles. He smelled like soap bubbles too but that wasn’t the point.   
  
Kirk was hungry.  
  
Then there was the troubling matter of the bodies all around him and the ache of his cheek and his rib. His ankle wasn’t too great either. He was hot and sweaty and the bodies were rolling one way and the other all at the same time. Bones was moving closer and Spock was moving away.   
  
“I should have known you were a cuddler,” Kirk muttered at Bones. He turned his head to look at Spock getting up. “Where are you going?”  
  
Spock took note of how Bones fit himself against Kirk’s less painful side and had no sense of shame about how he was crawling over a man. This was usually the part where the yelling and threatening started—in absence of disgust; Spock looked caught between loneliness and interest. “I am still Marshal. I will be expected to be available.”  
  
“We still your deputies?” Kirk asked.  
  
“With the exception of the doctor,” Spock said, “I would not feel entirely safe in allowing him to continue as a deputy. He is better suited as a doctor.” Spock found his clean pants and pulled them on. “Stress seems to—bring out a certain savagery.”  
  
“But I’m fine?” Kirk asked.  
  
“I would rather have you as an ally than an enemy,” Spock said, “however, you will need to recover fully before you begin your duties.” He pulled his shirt and vest on and picked up his coat before he headed to the door.   
  
“Spock,” Kirk said.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
Spock inclined his head and picked up his boots before he left.   
  
\--  
  
“So,” Chekov said from the doorway, “this is your new office now?” He looked at the dusty corners of the courtroom that hadn’t been used for its intended purpose in years. Komack was happy enough holding court in his sitting room and, if necessary, the Marshal’s office. Converting it would make the most sense considering the extra cell was already attached.   
  
“Yes,” Spock said. He set down the chair he had been moving to the table he intended to use as a temporary desk.   
  
Chekov nodded slowly. He was wearing clothes borrowed from another man. The shirt was white, the pants were brown and the suspenders were gold. He had his hands dug into his pockets while he shifted from one foot to another and looked around.   
  
“Can I be of some assistance to you?” Spock asked.  
  
“I’m a deputy, yes?” Chekov said.  
  
Spock nodded. “I have secured a full pardon for you from Judge Komack. He was…sufficiently embarrassed to have been taken in by a man of such character as Nero.” It was a strange sensation to have little idea what he was meant to say at this juncture. It had not been so many days ago that he had been offering this man his last meal.  
  
“Do I get paid?” Chekov asked.  
  
“A small salary,” Spock agreed.  
  
Chekov nodded again and pulled his hands out of his pockets. “Do you know how to play poker?”   
  
“No,” Spock said. He looked around at the unfinished work that was being delayed but these questions. He let his hands hang at his sides while Chekov took a few steps toward a wooden bench that was meant for spectators to sit on.   
  
“This looks heavy,” Chekov said.  
  
“Yes,” Spock agreed. Chekov did not offer his help and Spock was therefore spared accepting it. Instead, they fell into the work in silence and managed, in a matter of hours, to rearrange the court room into something approximating a Marshal’s office.   
  
\--  
  
Bones woke up with a snort and a yawn and a curse that sounded a lot like: “Damn it Joss,” before he groped around for boobs, found none and looked up at him. The look on his face was something between unpleasant shock and pleased surprise. He ran his finger down the throbbing bruise on the side of Kirk’s face and over the split in his lip before he levered himself up on one elbow and kissed him.   
  
“Ow,” Kirk mumbled. It was just a damn shame when a man hurt too much to appreciate fine things in life. Bones kissed him softer and then pushed himself off the bed because there were men to see. They got dressed—Kirk was wearing Spock’s clothes and it felt so damn strange, all that nice soft cloth against his skin.  
  
Bones went to check on all his patients.  
  
Kirk went to his mother and found her sitting next to Pike with her hand over his, looking out the window at the sunshine like she hadn’t seen it in years. Uhura was fixing her hair in the polished mirror over the wash basin and turned to look at him when he came in.  
  
“You’re walking,” she said.  
  
“Barely,” he countered. She just smiled and left to go check on her man. Kirk stood in front of his mother until she looked at him. “Mom.”  
  
“Jimmy,” she said quietly, “I think I want to open a shop. I’m a pretty good seamstress.”   
  
“Sounds good,” Kirk agreed and crouched down in front of Pike to see him. He reached out to run his hand across the back of his and waited until Pike opened his eyes far enough to see him. “What about you, what are you going to do?”  
  
Pike tried to smile and put his fingers over Kirk’s without all the shaking effort in his muscles. “Marshal.” Then a rickety laugh. “You did it, Jim.”  
  
Yeah.   
  
\--  
  
Five days later they found themselves in McCoy’s sitting room—they’d moved the table where there were more seats and stolen chairs from the hotel to make sure everyone had a spot. Uhura was sitting on Scotty’s lap, holding his cards for him, curling her pretty long fingers against the short hair at the nape of his neck while he stroked her thigh high up under her skirt like they couldn’t see him.  
  
Sulu glared at Chekov every time the kid dealt a hand of cards like he expected Pup to be cheat. “Deal from the top of the deck,” he said every time.   
  
Kirk poured their drinks from a one bottle and then another. McCoy sat back in his chair with a cigarette hanging between his lips while he glared at the cards he got and considered just folding his way out of this hand. It might have been worth it if not for the way Spock was frowning at his.   
  
“Ante up,” Sulu said. He couldn’t deal with the still raw wound across his arm and shoulder but he could officiate.   
  
Kirk threw in his button, Chekov threw in a penny, Sulu tossed a pebble, Uhura leaned forward to drop a hair pin, and Bones set his cards down to pick up a ripped square of bandage to throw in the pot.  
  
Spock stared at the pot of junk. “I do not understand the point of this.” He looked at his own pile of bullet shells and frowned all the harder. “You will gain nothing by _winning_ the pot.”  
  
Everyone laughed but Scotty leaned forward to point his injured hand at Kirk. “Get the man another drink, Captain.”   
  
“The point is just to play,” Kirk said as he slid a full glass across the table to Spock. “Have fun, now ante up.” They stared at one another for a moment before Spock did as he was told and then picked up his glass and took a drink.  
  
An hour later McCoy had gotten the bottle for his very own, nice and flush-warm all pleasantly drunk. Kirk was laughing about some story Scotty was telling involving two bar girls and a donkey that really wasn’t that funny. Spock looked morally offended and Pup was doing good just keeping his head up.  
  
“I just noticed,” Pup said suddenly and turned to look at Kirk when the laughing died, “you always get blonde girls and brown haired guys.”  
  
Kirk snorted—drunk, everything was funny—“Guess you’re safe, then.” He slapped Chekov on the shoulder. “Sulu, watch out.”  
  
“I sleep with one eye open,” Sulu remarked dryly.  
  
Scotty laughed. Uhura looked over at McCoy and Spock. “I don’t think you’re the one that should watch out, Sulu.” She wasn’t half as drunk as the rest of them but there was something just as strange and dangerous about her hot stare. “Then again,” she glanced at Spock who was flushed pink and contemplating his glass with some suspicion.  
  
“I believe,” Spock said, “this conversation borders on inappropriate.”  
  
McCoy laughed. “Wait until they start talking about Captain’s dick.”  
  
Everyone laughed. “You said it first!” Chekov shouted.  
  
Kirk winked at him.   
  
“I heard it wasn’t nearly as big as you say it is,” Uhura countered to the implied knowledge. “I have reliable sources that say it’s a gross overstatement.”  
  
“Ask the lady doctor down there,” Pup said and pointed a finger. It wasn’t aimed anywhere near McCoy but his meaning was still plain. If McCoy was any less drunk he might have been more offended—might have offered to bust the kid’s face again. Then again, five days later, two days after the mass funeral for the victims and he had no energy left to be pissed.  
  
“Fucking huge,” McCoy agreed, “are we still playing cards?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Kirk said.  
  
“I think,” Pup answered, “where’s my cards?”  
  
“In your hand,” Sulu answered. He took another drink and winced at the twinge in his arm before he sat back. Nobody was playing cards anymore, everyone was chuckling and reflecting and enjoying the glow. In a few more weeks they might be something approximating normal. They might have figured out what to do with themselves. Right now—it was just this.  
  
“You had sex with Captain?” Spock asked.  
  
“I’ve got witnesses,” McCoy said and waved his hand around the table. They shared their comments about his vocal abilities and McCoy just took a drink in salute to ridiculous things. “Are you going to hang me now?” he asked as he lapped the whiskey off his lips and leaned in close.  
  
“That wasn’t,” Spock said back, low and husky, as he leaned in closer without realizing it, “my first thought.”  
  
“I think Spock’s the kind that never takes his clothes off,” Scotty started. That conversation would go nowhere in a hurry. Everyone was already groaning at the start of it, muttering _don’t start_ and Spock wasn’t listening to a word. No, his drunk little brain and drunk dick were contemplating things about naked skin and possibilities.   
  
“Oh no he’s not,” Kirk said. “Alright—break it up. Give me that bottle.”  
  
McCoy pulled it closer to him, smiled like a drunk fool as he pushed his chair back, slouching low and tipped it up to swallow was left while Chekov cheered him on. When he dropped it on the ground he was past any kind of sensible drunk and floating along on dark thoughts and silly giggles. Spock was staring at him, Kirk was smirking at the two of them with something between possession and fury.  
  
“Time to go,” Sulu said and grabbed Pup by the sleeve.  
  
Uhura was kissing Scotty like she could feel the heat surging down McCoy’s body and pooling hard between his spread thighs. It wasn’t going to do him a damn bit of good really—just about too drunk—but he could nurse those thoughts until they were bright images in his brain.  
  
He didn’t even care which of them did it, he just wanted one of them. Kirk with his angry stare and Spock with his dark, dark black eyes eating him like something delicious.   
  
“Scotty,” Kirk said over the sound of the two of them sucking face.  
  
“Captain?”  
  
“Get out of here.”  
  
McCoy tipped his head to the side, smile across his face. “Come on, Jimmy boy.”  
  
It was Spock that moved first, long before Scotty was out of the room or out of the building. It was Spock that caught him by the shirt and pulled him up to his feet, that kissed him with a heady abandon and licked the taste of whiskey out of his mouth as he pulled his clothes open and didn’t care about lost buttons or ripped shirts.   
  
“Didn’t know you had it in you,” McCoy panted into Spock’s hair when the man dipped down to kiss his throat and yank his pants down. Too drunk to stand for too long, just drunk enough to look past Spock’s stooping back to where Kirk was turned in his chair and watching them.   
  
“I believe it is the alcohol,” Spock said as he turned them, pushed McCoy back until he hit the table and stripped his pants off. He moved back up, right between McCoy’s legs and kissed him hard, pushing their hips together, pants to skin and it scraped and hurt and wasn’t half enough.   
  
A bottle slapped down on the table to their side and Kirk reached over to grab Spock by the back of the head and yanked him over to kiss him. He released him with a lap of his tongue around Spock’s pink swollen lips and then pulled at McCoy.   
  
“You know what you’re doing?” Kirk asked Spock when he pulled back.  
  
“He’s doing alright so far,” McCoy said.  
  
“Turn around,” Kirk said to him and McCoy turned, face first into the pile of junk in the middle of his table left over from the poker game. The glass jar scraped on the table, they were kissing—slick, skin, slip—and then Spock’s hand was on his hip and McCoy grit his teeth and rubbed his sweaty forehead against the table as he pushed forward and in and it slipped and still stretched and hurt.  
  
“Remind me,” he gasped and grabbed the edge of the table, “to teach you how to fuck right.”  
  
Kirk sat back in the chair at his side. “It’s not spit, is it?” _So shut up and_ take it. He had an arm around his bruised ribs, tongue across his lips while he watched.   
  
Spock fucked him deep and slow—methodical as a grandfather clock while McCoy scratched the table and cursed and Kirk just _watched_. All the babbled, drunk-tongued curses couldn’t get Spock to move any faster, harder and McCoy was shaking long before he was close to coming.   
  
“Spock,” Kirk said.  
  
“Captain?” Spock breathed back.  
  
“Hard.”  
  
McCoy would have cursed if he had the breath, two hands hanging onto the edge of the table where it banged against his thighs and Spock had one hand on his hip and one on his shoulder as he followed orders so well and it was blinding, twisting, spiraling up until there was no controlling it and McCoy had no idea whose name he choked on when he came.  
  
He flopped to the ground when he was released and felt wet and used and—  
  
Spock was panting, staggering back to fall into the chair and looked just plain _shocked_.  
  
Kirk looked from one of them to the other. “Oh, don’t worry about me.”  
  
McCoy laughed. “I’m not.”   
  
"Fuck you," Kirk said.  
  
"It's my medical opinion," McCoy replied, "that that would be a bad idea." Must have been why he was rolling onto his belly, up onto his knees and crawling the short space over to tug at Kirk's pants. Spock came over too, bending and catching a kiss while McCoy did the dirty work. "You're not that big," he muttered.  
  
Kirk laughed into Spock's mouth.  
  
\--

Epilogue

  
It started with the cocking of a revolver. The click was loud enough that it hushed the room and everyone was peering over at the offended man with the long coat and the fancy shirt. Pup was leaning back in his chair across the table, eyes all wide and mouth hanging open like he didn’t understand how it had come to this.   
  
“Cheat,” the man hissed.  
  
“I wouldn’t,” Pup insisted, “you just do not know how to play so well. Sit down, I’ll teach you. Poker was invented in Russia.” The pretty blonde girl in the pretty green dress at his side was giggling behind her hand, brushing her curls over her shoulder as she flushed hot and rosy.   
  
“That’s my money and I want it back,” the man insisted.  
  
Bones looked across the bar at where Uhura was leaning forward with her elbows on the whiskey-soaked wood. “You figure we should bother?” he asked.  
  
Uhura shrugged. “I don’t think he’ll actually shoot him. At least he wouldn’t kill him—you’re the doctor.”  
  
Yeah well, Bones didn’t much figure he could amputate one of Pup’s arms just because the little cheating bastard got bored every couple of weeks and had to rile up the tourists and newcomers. Every time he started a bar brawl he brought Kirk and Spock into it and Kirk was all for a fist fight but Spock would stuff the whole damn room into the two jail cells he had and leave them there.  
  
“Give him the money,” Sulu said from his own poker game at a different table. He wasn’t even looking, didn’t look particularly worried. The men he was playing his game with knew how this scene went, they were chewing on stale old popcorn while they exchanged their cards and raised their bets.  
  
“I won this money fair and square. He’s a sore loser,” Pup objected.  
  
“You’ve got another chance and then I’m going to pull this trigger,” the man said.  
  
Pup looked impressed. The pretty little whore at his side kissed his cheek as she whispered promises for later and Pup grinned at the dirty words and rolled in his seat to get an arm around her and they might as well just started fucking right there. It was all in their eyes.   
  
The gunshot rang out and someone that had the misfortunate of being upstairs when the man shot the ceiling squealed an objection. Bones lifted his glass again and took a long drink. Uhura looked furious and Pup pushed his girl away to stand up.  
  
“I should arrest you,” he said.  
  
The man laughed at him.  
  
The brawl started with Chekov launching himself at the man with a loaded gun. They knocked into the table behind them, spilled drinks and money and knocked a man out of his chair. They beat on each other until the offended man (Bones thought his name was Henry) found a stash of cards up Chekov’s sleeve.  
  
“How did those get there?” Chekov said.  
  
Sulu pushed his chair back.  
  
“Get the hell out of here!” Uhura was screaming. She got the broom and beat on the bodies until they were falling through the doors. Bones took his glass with him and leaned against the bar while Sulu and Chekov fought off the crowd of offended poker players.   
  
“Look at that,” Jim said when he stepped up onto the dirty porch. He took the glass from Bones and swallowed what was left of it.  
  
“Spock’s going to be pissed,” Bones mumbled.  
  
Jim laughed, “he’s still pissed at Scotty.”  
  
Sure enough, the bar fight ended with Spock holding Pup by the scruff and the offended newcomer by the arm as he hauled them both off to jail.  
  
\--  
  
“You can’t arrest me!” Chekov shouted through the bars. He was, quite obviously, inebriated. His jacket was ripped in several places as he attempted to twist free and Spock pushed him through the open door of the cell before pulling the door closed.  
  
“I don’t understand why you’re arresting me,” Mr. Stevens announced loudly. “That’s the little cheat! And his chinamen partner.”  
  
Well, that was rude.  
  
“What’d you say?” Pup shouted as he slammed his body against the bars. Spock secured the lock before he pointed the second man into his own empty cell. “Say that to my face,” Pup shouted as he moved around to the bars common to the two cells.  
  
“I think he did,” Scotty said from where he was laying across the bench Spock had placed on the far wall. He had a pillow courtesy of Uhura and a blanket from Mama Winnie and a stack of books that Spock felt would improve his character while engaging his curiosity for explosives.   
  
“Your weapons,” Spock said.   
  
Pup pulled his guns first, then his knife, then his watch, and then a bit of rope he kept up his sleeve for emergency purposes, and lastly his second knife he kept in his boot. Then he glared at the man pointedly glaring back at him.   
  
“Spock,” Scotty said.  
  
“Yes?” Spock asked.  
  
“Tomorrow?” He had asked every evening if he would be free to leave the next day. The question was puzzling given that Spock only confined him to the cell in the evenings starting at six. Clearly, if he did not wish to be imprisoned he needed only to fail to report. He returned every night for a week without fail.   
  
“Perhaps,” Spock agreed.  
  
“Hey Spock,” Chekov shouted when he began to walk away, “make sure someone gets my money. I won that.”  
  
“Unfairly,” Spock amended.  
  
“You weren’t even there!”  
  
Spock left them to argue among themselves. Sulu was standing in the main room of the Marshal office with a bleeding lip and a dirty jacket. He had his pockets stuffed full of money. “Do you intended to remain here tonight?”  
  
“I didn’t think it would be a good idea to leave them alone,” Sulu answered, “Captain agrees.”  
  
Of course he did. Spock nodded. “I assume you intend to return Mr. Steven’s money to him?”  
  
The momentary silence seemed to signify that Sulu had had no intention of doing so before Spock suggested it but he ducked his head in agreement now. “They’re at the bar.”  
  
“Thank you,” Spock said before he left. In the past six months they had made great strides toward working as a unit as opposed to Captain ruling over his men that sometimes lowered themselves to obey the law. There was, of course, the sort of hiccups to the fluidity of their inner workings that were expected when one underwent a major shift in one’s lifestyle. He did not expect them to overcome their wild lifestyle in a matter of weeks.  
  
He had not yet settled into the lifestyle he now enjoyed. Companionship was as foreign to him as the ease with which Captain commanded his men and seemed to dismiss every worry except what he intended to eat. Male companionship was troublesome but they managed it with assistance from Uhura who provided them with rooms as necessary and whores to pose with. Jim was especially fond of the blonde women and was often engaged in arguments with Pup regarding which ones were the most attractive.  
  
Leonard spent his time with Uhura so frequently there was talk around the town that the southern gentleman must have been _one of those sort_. Spock disliked such discussion but it was better than the alternative so he left it largely alone.   
  
Nobody expected him to seek sexual gratification with whores. In fact, nobody expected him to do anything remotely human. It suited his purposes and allowed him a certain anonymity that he appreciated.   
  
“You know,” Jim said when Spock returned to the saloon. He was leaning back against the bar, one arm half around a pretty blonde woman and taking a long drink out of a tall glass. “If you don’t stop locking your deputies up, people are going to get the wrong idea.”  
  
“I am expected to keep order even among my own men, Captain,” Spock said.  
  
Jim didn’t smile as he looked back over at him. There was still hostility there, of course. It served its own purpose—Spock found it most attractive when it preceded sex as there was an attractive violence to the way Jim would push him down and hold him there while he took out his frustration on Spock’s body. Invariably, when Jim was hard, Leonard would be gentle. “Bad fuck,” Jim said now.  
  
“You still have not explained this concept,” Spock stated.  
  
“I will.”  
  
Uhura glared at him as she went past. Spock maintained that after removing a large portion of the top floor of the hotel _accidentally_ Scotty needed to be made aware that his experiments had a place and time. Putting him in jail was the only way Spock could think to make this point clear to him. “I refuse service to you,” she hissed.  
  
Spock looked at Jim and received no sympathy.  
  
\--  
  
Kirk left bites on Spock’s back when he shouldn’t have. It was part of the deal, the very logical deal, that there were no marks the next morning. He bit him anyway, leaning over his back, holding his wrists pinned to the bed, teeth digging in hard enough to leave bruises that wouldn’t show through his shirt and vest but were going to be rubbed raw from the suspenders. He fucked him until Spock was panting for any kind of relief and Bones’ eyes were all but glowing in the dim light. Enough is enough.  
  
Maybe. He wasn’t sure where the lines were drawn anymore. Six months had changed his life in ways he hadn’t gotten around to settling for himself. His mother had a store and Pike had a wooden box and Spock locked up his men because they deserved it (they did, really) but it was all harmless fun. Bones wanted him to wash behind his ears and Spock wanted someone to tell him when he was being too logical (because maybe he wanted to feel) and Kirk thought, sometimes, he missed how it was.  
  
Out there, in the dirt, laying in piles of boys, living off the land and his smarts with nobody to answer to but his Mama and his own conscience.  
  
So he fucked Spock until he shook with exhaustion and kissed him sweet and tender, stroked his hair until he was half asleep and Bones was slipping right into the spot Kirk was leaving. Taking over the soothing strokes of Spock’s hair. Kirk kissed him on the cheek and didn’t have to say where he was going or what he was doing.  
  
He pulled the keys to the jail cell out of Spock’s pants and took Bones’ horse. Sulu grinned when he strode into the Marshal’s office. “Captain,” he said with a tip of his hat.  
  
“Mr. Sulu,” he returned. Then through the door, down the steps, to where Pup was sitting cross-legged on the floor and just glowering at the book Scotty must have told him to read. Scotty looked up first, grinned at the keys in Kirk’s hand and stretched lazy and long.  
  
“Why Captain,” he said.  
  
“What?” Pup asked and looked up. “Captain!”  
  
“Boys,” Kirk said and threw the door open, “I think we’ve got somewhere better to be, don’t you?”  
  
They whooped and hollered and ran up the steps in a thunder of boots and bad intentions. Kirk looked at the man glaring at him from the corner of his cell.   
  
“What kind of law are you?” the man demanded.  
  
Kirk laughed and unlocked his door too. He went up the stairs and left the man to make his own decisions about disobeying Spock. The boys were talking loud about places they wanted to go—why they heard about this saloon over in—and there were girls there that would—and Scotty was laughing loud and bawdy as Pup rambled on and on.   
  
Kirk tossed the keys in the drawer of Spock’s desk, took the Marshal’s hat off the nail on the wall and his duster off the hook. “Let’s go, boys.”  
  
One day, maybe, they’d have to drag Spock with them. Show him the other side—for now, this was just fine.


End file.
